PSYC62H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Brain Stimulation Reward, Nucleus Accumbens, Psychoactive Drug
Document Summary
Addiction: dependence, tolerance, sensitization, drugs of abuse- have rewarding effects which cause individuals to enjoy taking the drug. These three don"t always occurred during addiction and can occur in the absence of addiction. A reward can be something pleasurable, can take away unpleasant things, can have positive emotional valence, and can serve as an incentive in the context of learning (eg: reinforcing) (positive or negative reinforcement) Something neutral that can produce reward is called classical or pavlov conditioning. Individuals seek rewards and stimuli from the environment. Different types of rewards: natural rewards, e. g. , food, water, sex, nurturing. Cause pleasure when procuring the rewards naturally adaptive roles: artificial rewards, e. g. , drugs, money (gambling) Act on the same brain systems that natural reward systems work on. Olds and milner (1954: discovered that electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain was rewarding and reinforcing. They put a rat in a skinner box with an electrode in the brain.
