• The UK based winners cracked the brain’s “reward centre”
• It influences your happiness, pleasure or motivation to do something
• But the system can go wrong turning people into addicts

Three UK-based scientists have won a prestigious prize worth 1m euros for studying the brain’s reward centre.Their work helps understand our drive to shop, eat or even land on the moon.

Reward is necessary for keeping us alive, but it can also spiral out of control leading to gambling and drug addiction.

Wolfram Schultz, Peter Dayan and Ray Dolan said winning The Brain Prize – the biggest in the field of neuroscience – was a “great honour”.

Prof Schultz is planning a holiday with the family, but his co-winners are still trying to figure out how to spend their prize money from Denmark’s Lundbeck Foundation.

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