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Just over fifty years ago, psychologists James Olds and Peter Milner, working at McGill University in Canada, carried out their pioneering experiments which discovered that rats would repeatedly press levers to receive tiny jolts of current injected through electrodes implanted deep within their brains (Olds and Milner, 1954).
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Over fifty years ago the discovery that rats would work to...
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A scientific program for the study of pleasure. Pleasure is...
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Olds, J., & Milner, P. (1954). Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 47 (6), 419–427. https://.
James Olds (May 30, 1922 – August 21, 1976) was an American psychologist who co-discovered the pleasure center of the brain with Peter Milner while he was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University in 1954.
Brain stimulation reward (BSR) is a pleasurable phenomenon elicited via direct stimulation of specific brain regions, originally discovered by James Olds and Peter Milner. BSR can serve as a robust operant reinforcer.
In 1954, James Olds and Peter Milner discovered that a rat would press a bar to receive a brief impulse of electricity through an electrode implanted in certain areas of the brain.
by James Olds. psychologist, has at least caused a minor revolution with regard to this drive-reduction theory of reward. This has been through the discovery that animals work not only to turn off discomforting stimuli but to turn on brain stimulations in an extensive set of brain regions.
Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. J Comp Physiol Psychol. 1954 Dec;47 (6):419-27. doi: 10.1037/h0058775.
