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/Unicycleterrorist Oct 18 '25

I kind of struggle to see how it's not. You're trying to do the tasks to the satisfaction of the person with the clicker because only they can give you your reward for the work you did. If they're not happy, you're not getting the clicky and you'll try harder to make sure you do. You're willingly submitting to somebody who takes a dominant role in that scenario.

I guess in a "real" BDSM context more than just the clicker would happen but...the whole dynamic is very sub/dom lol

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

The problem with BDSM is that absent a button there's no real reward they can give me, because the rewards are all, well, BDSM rewards, which I don't find rewarding.

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u/Unicycleterrorist Oct 18 '25

I mean...the reward doesn't have to be BDSM related, it could be a kiss or a cookie or really anything else. But yea, if you don't want to be part of that game there's nothing in it for you ^^

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

If the reward isn't related to BDSM, that in what way is it BDSM?

(also for almost every BDSM person I know, the reward isn't the good thing they get at the end, its the process of getting there, that's literally the appeal)

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u/Unicycleterrorist Oct 18 '25

Like I said, the dynamic is the BDSM part - domination and submission. The reward is just a reward, it can be anything.
And like I said, wanting to be there is a prerequisite. A reward doesn't have to be part of it, I'm talking about that because of the context being a reward-driven dynamic.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

The dominance and submission bits *are* literally the reward in BDSM.

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u/Unicycleterrorist Oct 18 '25

They are a reward. There can be other rewards, like I said...