Subjects would then lie in the scanner while reading these letters written about them by several of the people they care about most. Our intuitive theories suggest there is something radically different about the kind of pleasure that comes from people saying nice things about us and the kind of pleasure that comes from eating a scoop of our favorite ice cream. The former is intangible, both literally and figuratively, while the latter floods our senses. Although there are surely differences between physical and verbal sweets, this fMRI study suggested that the brain’s reward system seems to treat these experiences more similarly than we might expect. Being the object of such touching statements activates the ventral striatum in the same way that the other basic rewards in life do.