Mushroom foraging can be compared to gambling addiction and internet addiction because all three activities are driven by the same dopamine mechanism, according to Eliana Monakhova, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Higher School of Economics' Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience in Moscow.
Speaking to the Russian outlet KP.RU, Monakhova said dopamine neurons fire most strongly not when a person receives a reward they were already expecting, but during what is known as a prediction error, when the outcome turns out better than anticipated.
She explained that activities where the outcome is uncertain, such as whether a fish will bite, whether a porcini mushroom will turn up under the next fir tree, or whether a lottery ticket will win, hold people's attention far more strongly than activities with a guaranteed, steady result.
Monakhova said this effect is known in behavioural psychology as a variable reinforcement schedule. When a reward arrives at random intervals rather than on a predictable schedule, the behaviour it reinforces becomes extremely resistant to fading.
Not a pathology, researcher says
Despite the comparison, Monakhova stressed that what Russians call the quiet hunt, a traditional term for mushroom picking, is not a pathology. She described it instead as an ancient adaptive mechanism that has driven humans to search for food for millions of years.
According to Monakhova, the mechanism turns into a trap only when an environment is deliberately designed to exploit it without offering the person any real benefit, as with casinos or the endless scrolling feeds of social media.
She pointed out that mushroom picking and fishing come with built-in stopping points, such as physical tiredness, a full basket, or the end of the season. Gambling and social media feeds, by contrast, have no such natural limits. Monakhova said it is this absence of a point of satisfaction, rather than dopamine itself, that turns a pastime into a genuine problem.
Why some people are more at risk
Monakhova added that a person's tendency to fall into these dopamine traps is individual. It depends on the sensitivity of a person's dopamine system, their genetic makeup, and whether they have other sources of pleasure in their life.
She noted that the artificial environments created by modern technology do not spare anyone. A grandmother and her grandchild, she said, can become equally absorbed in their smartphones, regardless of age.
What comes next
Monakhova concluded that there is no need to treat a passion for hunting mushrooms as a disorder requiring a cure. Breaking free of the traps that humans themselves have built, she said, is a far harder task. One way to do that, in her view, is to return to leisure pursuits such as foraging or fishing, which carry their own natural, built-in limits.
The Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Higher School of Economics, where Monakhova works, studies how the brain processes reward, decision-making and behaviour, drawing on methods from neuroscience and psychology.
The Russian news outlet Lenta.ru previously published a detailed guide on which mushrooms to look for in autumn, where to find them, and how to tell edible mushrooms apart from their dangerous look-alikes.
