Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain.

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Abstract
A preliminary study was made of rewarding effects produced by electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain. Rats were used and stimulation was by 60-cycle alternating current with voltages ranging from 1/2 to 5 v. Bipolar needle electrodes were permanently implanted at various points in the brain. Animals were tested in Skinner boxes where they could stimulate themselves by pressing a lever. They received no other reward than the electrical stimulus in the course of the experiments. The primary findings may be listed as follows (a) There are numerous places in the lower centers of the brain where electrical stimulation is rewarding in the sense that the experimental animal will stimulate itself in these places frequently and regularly for long periods of time if permitted to do so. (b) It is possible to obtain these results from as far back as the tegmentum, and as far forward as the septal area; from as far down as the subthalamus, and as far up as the cingulate gyrus of the cortex. (c) There are also sites in the lower centers where the effect is just the opposite: animals do nothing to obtain or to avoid stimulation. (d) The reward results are obtained more dependably with electrode placements in some areas than others, the septal area being the most dependable to date. (e) In septal area preparations, the control exercised over the animal''s behavior by means of this reward is extreme, possibly exceeding that exercised by any other reward previously used in animal experimentation. The possibility that the reward results depended on some chromic painful consequences of the implantation operation was ruled out on the evidence that no physiological or behavioral signs of such pain could be found. The phenomenon is discussed as possibly laying a methodological foundation for a physiological study of the mechanisms of reward.

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