hedonia

Hedonia refers to the experience of pleasure or the capacity to experience pleasure, especially as studied in psychology and related fields. The word comes from Greek hedone, meaning pleasure, and is used to describe the positive, affective component of mood, as distinct from cognitive evaluations of life satisfaction. In psychological literature, hedonia is often discussed alongside eudaimonia, which emphasizes meaning and overall flourishing.

In neuroscience, hedonia is associated with brain reward systems that generate pleasurable feelings. The hedonic experience involves neurotransmitter systems such as opioids and, to a degree, dopamine, and engages circuits in the nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum, and prefrontal cortex. A key distinction in contemporary research is between "liking" (the actual pleasure of a reward) and "wanting" (the motivation to obtain it); hedonia is more closely tied to liking, whereas dopamine-dominated "wanting" drives pursuit.

Hedonia is sometimes contrasted with anhedonia, the diminished ability to experience pleasure, a symptom in mood disorders, schizophrenia, and other conditions. In philosophy, hedonia is connected to hedonism, the view that pleasure is the ultimate good, though in scientific usage hedonia usually refers to experiential pleasure rather than value judgments about pleasure.