Desire is a complex drive that strongly reflects personal preferences. It is made up of two different components—liking and wanting. Put simply, liking is linked to getting pleasure, while wanting is linked to an actual need for something. With some activities, such as eating, sleeping, and sexual activity, liking and wanting overlap, and the resulting desire has survival value. However, an individual with an addiction may want and “need” a drug, but not particularly like or enjoy it, so the resulting pleasure is tainted with destruction. Liking and wanting seem to use somewhat different brain circuits, although dopamine is the most important neurotransmitter in both cases.

Each emotion sparks a slightly different pattern of activity in certain brain areas. Hatred, for example, activates the amygdala (which responds to all negative emotion), the insula (which is associated with disgust and rejection), and also areas of the brain concerned with action and calculation. This pattern may reflect plotting, followed by attack.

For those of you who don’t know, this is Dr. Kevorkian. More commonly known as Dr. Death. This man not only provided a choice but an answer as well. In creating a machine called “The Thanatron” he assisted patients in suicide. Anyone who was too physically ill or unable to kill themselves came to Kevorkian for help. Some speculate the doctor as a filthy murderer while others consider him an empathetic saint. Put simply, he never killed anyone, he just provided the sick and unwell the humanly right to end one’s life.