History
In 1953, James Olds and Peter Milner observed that rats preferred to return to the region of the test apparatus where they received direct electrical stimulation to the septal area of the brain. From this demonstration, Olds and Milner inferred that the stimulation was rewarding, and through subsequent experiments, they confirmed that they could train rats to execute novel behaviors, such as lever pressing, in order to receive short pulse trains of brain stimulation. Olds and Milner discovered the reward mechanisms in the brain involved in positive reinforcement and their experiments led to the conclusion that electrical stimulation could serve as an operant reinforcer. According to B.F. Skinner, operant reinforcement occurs when a behavior is followed by the presentation of a stimulus, and it is considered essential to the learning of response habits. Their discovery enabled motivation and reinforcement to be understood in terms of their underlying physiology, and it led to further experimentation to determine the neural basis of reward and reinforcement. Since the initial discovery, the phenomenon of BSR has been demonstrated in all species tested, and Robert Heath similarly demonstrated that BSR can be applied to humans.
Read more about this topic: Brain Stimulation Reward
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