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Neuroscience – the scientific study of the nervous system – once at
the periphery of the way we thought about the Internet, is suddenly in
the spotlight. Just by understanding how the human brain works –
Internet companies can get more users.

It’s all in your head
The Internet takes advantage of the two most important features
within the human brain – that social behaviour elicits pleasure and that

vision triggers memories and emotions deep within our unconscious
minds – and quite simply, the key to the future success of the Internet
and future billion-dollar valuations will depend on how the Internet can
get that neuroscience right.

The reward pathway
The first feature is that social activity triggers a nerve pathway
deep in our subconscious – the mesolimbic dopamine pathway – also

called the reward pathway, releasing a chemical called dopamine which
bathes the brain’s pleasure centres – similar to other activities with
intrinsic value such as food, sex and getting money. People like talking

about themselves on social media because it has intrinsic value by
generating a warm emotion of being part of something important. In
other words, we like sharing because it is enjoyable for its own sake as a

social activity. In this way sharing is deeply sensory – we humans
literally ‘get high’ on social activity.

This is a view of the human brain cut down the middle. The reward
pathway – shown in red above – is activated by a rewarding stimulus.

The major structures in the reward pathway are highlighted: the ventral
tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex.
The VTA sends information along its connections to both the nucleus
accumbens and the prefrontal cortex. The neurons of the VTA contain the

neurotransmitter dopamine which is released in the nucleus accumbens and
in the prefrontal cortex. The pathway shown here is not the only pathway
activated by rewards, other structures are involved too, but only this part of