There's actually research around this. I don't have references to any of the papers I read 10+ years ago, but the field is ripe with data since it's gotten easi

There's actually research around this. I don't have references to any of the papers I read 10+ years ago, but the field is ripe with data since it's gotten easier to measure things. One of the surprising results in this area, is that contrary to what was believed 20 years ago, dopamine levels rise prior to an anticipated reward. That is to say, we learn that some thing that our body "really wants" is coming and the brain gets flooded with dopamine before the thing is introduced into our body, or the event actually happens. So, like with sugary food, dopamine will peak before we've ingested it, possibly before we even even put the food in our mouth. This was a very unexpected discovery based on how we thought dopamine worked. This is why ritual can be so important for a lot of behaviors, the repeated actions create an anticipatory effect in the brain that allows for sort of a bigger positive feedback loop. I wish I could find the paper it was a big enough deal, I thought it might be easy to google. Here's a paper from around the period I was thinking in any event if you are actually interested in how these things are measured. "Dopamine in motivational control: rewarding, aversive, and alerting" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032992/ That will lead you to over 266 referenced papers, and I'm sure the ability to measure has only gotten better in the last 10 years. I will warn you though, this is a total rabbit hole. I used to casually study neurobiology, and it's an amazingly fascinating topic.