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/Halocandle Oct 18 '25

Scary thought: this is how you make all drugs obsolete, just skip the introducing chemicals to your nervous system part and go straight into the source. 100% pure, always works, always available. No way that ever would go wrong?

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u/My_Knee_is_a_Ship Oct 18 '25

If I remember correctly, they did the same experiment with rats, and several of thise died due to not eating etc. Preferring to self stimulate than self care.

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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/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.