NEUR 1201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Central Nervous System, Nucleus Accumbens, Mesolimbic Pathway
20 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
It is an ancient notion that at the root of all human behaviour is the seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain. A slightly more refined point of view suggests that our most powerful motivations come from behaviours that are beneficial to our species from an evolutionary standpoint. There, it stands to reason that our brain has developed pathways with the primary role is to provide pleasure as a reward for carrying out these functions. In 1954 oldsand milner were studying rats and discovered intracranial self- stimulation (icss). Icss is a form of operant conditioning, in which the rats learn that a behaviour (i. e. a bar press) results in a reward (i. e. electrical stimulation) increasing the likelihood of the behaviour occurring again. Cell bodies of dopaminergic neurons are found in the ventral tegmental area (vta). Their axons project primarily to the cortex and the limbic system (hippocampus and nucleus accumbens).
