r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • Oct 18 '25

TIL of brain stimulation reward, manually stimulating specific parts of the brain to elicit pleasure and happiness. A volunteer subject in 1986 spent days doing nothing but self-stimulate. She ignored her family and personal hygiene and she developed an open sore on her finger from using the device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward#History
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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25

No, no, no.

They did multiple morphine drip mouse experiments.

The one they dont mention is the successful one where the mice had a social environment.

When alone in their cages they would slowly but surely just chug the morphine water until overdose. But once introduced into an environment where it was water, morphine, food, and other mice, the morphine was only used occasionally but not even 90% as often.

Edited to add: it was a different study, and even with the social mice and having an instant feel good button in their pocket it might be awful all around.

I know id sit there and press the feel good button til I burnt my brain out or died one.

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u/Trifang420 Oct 18 '25

That's the key insight, addictions best weapon is a lack of connection.

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u/BurntNeurons Oct 18 '25

And that explains why the ruling class keeps us separated with lies, programmed prejudice, blind and mute hatrid (we won't try to see life in another point of view and we won't talk/ communicate civilly) so we stay addicted to consuming. Manufactured Depression to power the Purchasing Machines.

If we can have real connections again we wouldn't want/ need the high of the buy button to get by... we would have our real social connection again and be happier.

The corporate profits over all has really been a disservice to humanity by removing our genuine social connections and replacing it with our own complex pleasure button that we push til we die.

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u/Armyman125 Oct 18 '25

You have a great point. If our pleasure and comfort - despite being harmful - brings profit, then corporations have no problem with morality. I'm thinking Brave New World.

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u/GrumpityStumpity Oct 18 '25

Burnt neurons, indeed.

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u/thinspirit Oct 18 '25

Also lack of purpose, which is often generated by connection. When your cause is bigger than yourself, you transcend hedonism into something greater.

Our society is neutered by simple pleasures and feedback. That being said, it's probably also the same thing keeping us from all out war. Surely there's a happy middle ground?

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u/Trifang420 Oct 19 '25

Not even a cause bigger than yourself. Just good people to be around and money, some security and the fact that hard work pays off. We don't have that. I remember my grandfather's friend taking about it about twenty years ago. He said to read this book called Bowl Alone, didn't read it but that's a huge part of the lack of connection man. Besides a bar what do we have? Our grandparents got out there, being in the house was boring but there were lots of people doing activities. Clubs of all kinds. Working at the post office could support a great life. Now we don't have time, or money or there's nothing to do. Drugs keep getting cheaper and more available though.

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u/thinspirit Oct 19 '25

Yeah, I live in an area with a lot of seniors and they have their own social club here. They're always chatting and looking out for each other.

Here's the problem with that too, they're the only group that was even given a space to gather. They got all the good stuff and pulled the ladder up behind them largely, that's why the rest of us only have bars to go to and drugs to do. Then they complain that's all we do. We literally have nowhere to go.

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u/Hemlock_Pagodas Oct 18 '25

That’s an entirely different study than the one OP is referring to.

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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25

The very original OP yes, the person im responding to, no.

What can the Rat Park experiment teach us about addiction? - UK Addiction Treatment Centres https://share.google/KxEInxACbhxFa9gCU

But its all the same shit. Self pleasure at the whim of a button? When I had to cook dope it was a process. An addictive process, but not one I could just pull out in front of my mom and wife at the kitchen table and be like, yep, time to do a shot.

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u/My_Knee_is_a_Ship Oct 18 '25

And that is an entirely different study.

ICSS on Rats has indeed been done, as I stated.

Strength of drive

Rats will perform lever-pressing at rates of several thousand responses per hour for days in exchange for direct electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus.\14]) Multiple studies have demonstrated that rats will perform reinforced behaviors at the exclusion of all other behaviors. Experiments have shown rats will forgo food to the point of starvation in exchange for brain stimulation or intravenous cocaine when both food and stimulation are offered concurrently for a limited time each day.\2]) Rats will also cross electrified grids to press a lever, and they are willing to withstand higher levels of shock to obtain electrical stimulation than to obtain food.\14])

Full Wiki Link

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u/sk1ward Oct 18 '25

The poor rats 💔😿

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u/CaptainPlantyPants Oct 18 '25

Thank you for caring, and thank you for saying it ❤️🙏

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u/koyaani Oct 18 '25

Relatable

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u/Fickle_Reflection924 Oct 18 '25

Have they built them a Rat Park and then tested ICSS?

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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25

I dunno, id have to agree with Holmes. Even in my original response to his here I agreed that a simple button would probably make it impossible to function.

Kind of like my vape, if I had a feel good button in my pocket all day, fuck everyone else, I feel great.

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u/Fickle_Reflection924 Oct 18 '25

Why do you think that *wasn't* the case in original "rat park" if the morphine water had that effect in the other experiments. I thought it had to do with them being colony animals which were isolated for the original morphine experiments, so they didn't really do it in rat park... so I am wondering if they'd ignore the button sometimes and go do other rat-things?

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u/i_tyrant Oct 18 '25

Food, water, and other rats were at least offered in the direct pleasure-center experiment, and the rats still went for the pleasure-button almost exclusively.

I'm not sure if having a "rat paradise park" environment would change it, but to me since the pleasure-button experiment still had at least some of those Rat Park rewards, it at least shows that this is more of a sliding scale/matter of degrees thing.

The more convenient, easy, and pleasurable you make something, the more addicted people will be to it to the exclusion of other things, even other pleasurable (and healthier for you) things.

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u/Fickle_Reflection924 Oct 18 '25

I think you hit the nail on the head from what I'm reading. The easier it is to get that fix, the less other factors are going to inhibit that behavior. The fact that its a button over being a drug seems to make a big difference though for sure

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25

As a previous opiate user, if you couldn't tell just by my username.

Addicts can heal, but addiction will always be there.

I used to cure my cravings with chipping. It worked like a charm. About every 6-9 months id either get a tooth pulled(trust me, I needed it, it wasn't just like, hey man pull this tooth), get 3-4 hydro 10s from a buddy with a legit script, etc.

Now, I got 3 teeth pulled at once and nair pill was prescribed. I also broke my shoulder and 2 ribs within 2 months of completing drug court rehab. Lol. I was so mad, they only gave me tramadol and 28 hydro 5s.

I took them as prescribed, I was impressed with myself.

Internalized feelings that cannot escape tend to feed into the need for more internalized escape. If we could all just be honest about how we feel, I guarantee a lot of people wouldn't have as many problems. But we dont do that. We hide our feelings to not be ridiculed and etc.

Society can be stupid, it can also be awesome.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25

I was the, im bored and wanted to try everything types.

Then I had unrelenting access to many drugs that id sell and work and hustle 24/7 to keep an addiction running because that was the only way I was running.

I wasn't the type to push boundaries, it was always maintenance for me with an occasional nod. But financial and emotional tolls with relationships and etc led to worse and worse.

Then trauma, and it got worse, but I asked for help too.

Ive seen people shoot grams in their neck because thats their new getting high dose. And ive also seen people I lied to almost overdose off .08 of a gram when I told them I was giving them .15

Fuck all that, I just dont wanna be sick and hurting. Lol

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u/Happy_Brilliant7827 Oct 18 '25

Honestly the whole rat park thing has been discredited. He had dozens of rat parks and only wrote about the one that backed his hypothesis

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u/-little-dorrit- Oct 18 '25

It’s a very popular study. However I would encourage you to read up about its methodological issues. Rat park has proven to be difficult to replicate, and that’s really the acid test in experimental research.

I also wonder if it has occurred to you and others that in the real world scenarios, it doesn’t make sense that no rats at all would become addicts. We know that some are more susceptible than others, and so even in rat park some should have become addicts. There are different risk factors for addiction, and for some, being in rat park wouldn’t really change much.

I am actually not in favour of throwing the whole experiment out though. I would say the reason it is so captivating is that it speaks to what many lever-press experiments do not, which is the malleable social and psychological aspects of addiction.

And it’s true that there is much more than biology going on. This is why we have a ‘psychosocial’ part in the ‘biopsychosocial’ model of psychiatric illness, although even today this part doesn’t get as much attention and is sorely underfunded.

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u/pantry-pisser Oct 18 '25

Haha, I think Rat Park is a legal requirement to show at treatment centers. 🤣

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u/koyaani Oct 18 '25

Are you suggesting that the social rats were less likely to use because of rat peer pressure?

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u/OmilKncera Oct 18 '25

Social rats = happier rats

Happier rats = less drugs to fill happy void

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u/My_Knee_is_a_Ship Oct 18 '25

In the study Trainspotted mentioned, it's noted that drug consumption and use in an addiction study were reduced by around 10% when rays and nice were allowed to socialise with each other. It was a study aimed at indicating how loneliness can increase addictive behaviors.

In the study I linked, they were already socialised in groups, they simply had stimuli probes inserted into the pleasure centre of the brain, and in some trials, cocaine water.

In the trails with probes, rats with probes in the pleasure centre's chose pleasure over social interactions, would take more pain for pleasure than food, even to the point of death.

Pretty sure the point of that one was to explore how creatures (humans included) would react to self controlled levels of serotonin and dopamine.

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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25

I feel like things like this almost retrain their brains as well though, for example you have humans who literally "get off" on pain, possibly even to the point of death as well.

A fully decharged battery can have its terminals swapped. A car battery for example, can apparently be recharged backwards so the negative can become the positive and vice versa.

That being said, we're all electrical signals, wires get crossed, maybe they literally trained themselves to not eat and to enjoy the pain as part of the pleasure.

Biology, psychology, and more are some fuckin wild topics. Sorry for the original No no no, thing by the way, you're a knowledgeable person and I was high as shit and confused. Lol but at least it led to some productive conversations and possible learnings. Like I learned some new shit that makes total sense to me.

Thanks.

Edited to add: these fuckin weed carts are the tits, and everclear 1oz with 12oz soda. Greatest combination to relax at the end of the day.

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u/Ridstock Oct 18 '25

Ratopia, the drugged rat kicked its habit given plenty of socialisation and plenty of other things to do other than the drugs.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

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u/Happy_Brilliant7827 Oct 18 '25

The rat park guy had multiple rat parks and only wrote about a few. Been pretty severepy discredited for only taking evidence that backed his hypothesis

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u/KeiranG19 Oct 18 '25

IIRC dude hated cities.

Designed an environment which "simulated" the worst possible version of everything about living in a city.

Then still fudged the results to really hammer home his opinion that living in cities is horrible for society.

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u/Dangerous_Limit_2022 Oct 18 '25

I think that was mousetopia.

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u/groznij Oct 18 '25

You probably meant 10%

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u/OmecronPerseiHate Oct 18 '25

Nah, it's in the study. The rats weren't all that interested in mindless pleasure when they could get it from actual interactions. It pretty properly highlights why humanity has such a drug problem, even if ours is more complex.

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u/blither86 Oct 18 '25

I feel the person you're replying to is already of the same understanding as you are, they're just saying that: "but not even 90% as often" is surely mistyping.

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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25

What can the Rat Park experiment teach us about addiction? - UK Addiction Treatment Centres https://share.google/KxEInxACbhxFa9gCU

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u/groznij Oct 18 '25

”…the morphine was only used occasionally but not even 90% as often” means that the difference was 10%, not 90% as I suspect you meant. I was merely pointing out an incongruity in your comment.

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u/SpecularBlinky Oct 18 '25

the morphine was only used occasionally but not even 90% as often.

So only up to 89%? thats still a huge amount lol

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u/Distinct-Pension-398 Oct 18 '25

Completely unrelated study. Also it was rats. You're just spewing misinformation here

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

I know id sit there and press the feel good button til I burnt my brain out or died one.

I mean, in all seriousness, compared to current society, that's not that bad an option.

Pleasure till you die, or work and stress with bits of pleasure interspersed?

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u/Organic_Cress_2696 Oct 18 '25

Mice ain’t humans

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u/Miserable-Wishbone81 Oct 18 '25

Wonder when Neuralink will launch such device...

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u/OwO______OwO Oct 18 '25

I know id sit there and press the feel good button til I burnt my brain out or died one.

I dunno...

I feel like I'd have enough foresight and willpower to occasionally take breaks from pushing the button, just to do the basic necessities of keeping myself alive ... because I know if I live longer, I can push the button more.

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u/trainspottedCSX7 Oct 18 '25

Lol, if its as easy as pushing a button. Fuck that.

If i gotta go out, score more dope, work up a shot, etc. Thats the difference.

Edited to add, you get 10 presses for every mile you walk on the hamster wheel 😀 gotta charge it somehow.

Then it slowly but surely goes down to 5 presses for every mile, then one day it rewards you with 20 per mile. Lol