Just give us a clear plan so we have the joy of anticipating our reward

With no end in sight to the restrictions and no real plan, there’s also no realistic scope for the pleasure of hope and planning, writes

IN 1998, Wolfram Schultz, a neuroscientist with Cambridge University, changed the world’s understanding of pleasure, anticipation and reward.

In a series of experiments, Schultz implanted electrodes into the brains of macaque monkeys, giving him the ability to analyse neurons firing in an area full of dopamine receptors. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter linked to pleasure of all kinds.

A group of these monkeys were then taught to pull a lever when a certain light came on. That action released a reward — a quick hit of sugar-rich fruit juice.

Schultz was seeking to examine how the monkeys’ neural networks reacted to the pleasure the juicy reward brought.

But he eventually noticed something unexpected and game-changing for neurology — the monkeys received their expected hit of dopamine, but not when they got their fruit.

They got their pleasure, instead, when the signal light came on. It wasn’t the taste of the juice their brains reacted to, it was the expectation of it being delivered.

Dopamine is released in anticipation of an event, not during the event itself. The pursuit of pleasure is what brings the rewards.

Schultz’s monkeys give us an insight into one reason this lockdown has hit the morale of the public harder than previous iterations — polling from Ireland Thinks has found that 77pc of people have found the last few months harder on their mental health.

Unlike last March or October of 2020, these weeks have been devoid of a visible or navigable end destination.

The indefinite length of this period of isolation and mindnumbing routine means we’ve been robbed of the biological joys planning, expectation and anticipation can bring.

We can’t make future plans — and we shouldn’t underestimate how big an impact that can have on our daily lives.

It’s not just that we’re unable to meet friends, see family, go to weddings, go on holiday, travel abroad, play sport or go to gigs — it’s that we’re deprived of the tangible satisfaction of looking forward to those events.

Just like all primates, human beings are wired to get much more enjoyment and happiness from anticipation and planning than from any actual event or act. Brian Knutson, Professor of Psychology at Stanford, replicated in humans the effects Schultz found in his studies.

Knutson placed a series of individuals in fMRI brain scanners and asked them to play a simple card game — one with a potential monetary reward.

And then, as they played, his team assessed the blood flow to different areas of the brain, those areas chock-full of dopamine receptors.

He found that, just like the monkeys, dopamine flared not when a monetary award was won, but beforehand when the player started anticipating the possibility of their success.

Similar studies have found the same effect when frequent users refresh their social media feeds, casino-goers pull the lever of a slot machine, or cocaine users see a bag of white powder.

Where humans depart from other primates is our ability to anticipate a far-off reward. It is anticipation and expectation that drives joy, rather than arriving at a moment — the building excitement for a foreign holiday, rather than the beach or tourist attractions themselves.

Whether our plan is for a holiday, a degree or a particular level of fitness, we get pleasure from anticipating that reward.

That’s one reason why this lockdown feels different — no sign yet exists of an end and therefore there’s no realistic scope for anticipation of new joys or rewards.

Without an aim to work towards or look forward to, a significant amount of the joy we feel every day has been taken from us. It’s an inevitable reality of the pandemic, but its inevitability doesn’t change the impact on individuals.

The neurological quirk that sees us rewarded for our anticipation of an event, months or years in advance, means that the progress towards large-scale vaccine roll-out brings great hope — even if the eventual end goal of mass global vaccination is further away than many may have hoped for in the last months of 2020.

The public doesn’t need an immediate reward, or an immediate return to meaningful events, to start feeling positive internal impacts.

Any future public health communication strategy, such as the imminent ‘Living with Covid’ plan, needs to be cognisant of this fact.

A return to loosened restrictions isn’t what’s needed, but rather an honest and realistic idea of what the future may hold as the country hits various vaccine roll-out milestones. The minute that a feasible and safe roadmap can be provided, it has to be — however long that road may be. And its creation should be viewed as a communications imperative, rather than an optional extra.

It doesn’t have to be made up of guaranteed promises or unrealistic certainty, in fact it shouldn’t be — but it does need to function as a guide with tangible, understandable touchpoints people can look towards.

Because humans are clarity and direction addicts. They love deadlines and mile-markers: the very fact that so many people have begun to deprive themselves of some normal treats during Lent speaks to their anticipation of Easter, just one of the mile-markers allowing for pleasurable anticipation.

People need a clear destination to strive for, to allow for a recalibration.

To begin to realistically discuss their next visit home, their next outdoor gathering with close friends, their next trip to see an elderly relative or a young grandchild.

Even if those events are still potentially months away, and even if they’re not guaranteed.

Good communications planning starts with the target audience. With their realities, their needs.

The — hopefully final — ‘Living with Covid’ plan will be most successful if it starts with the target audience and sets out to meet the fundamental human need of dates or targets to look forward to. It should turn on the light that signals we’re allowed to dream of fruit juice once again.

‘Dopamine is released in anticipation of an event, not during the event’