On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, David Hogberg went:

> Just a little history: The original Olds & Milner (1954) findings did
> involve electrical stiulation of the septal region/septal nuclei which
> rats preferred to access to conventional/biological rewards.  It was *a*
> so-called pleasure center, one of a large number of them. FWIW, Olds and
> one of his graduate students, David Margules, systematically identified
> a number of identical feeding and pleasure areas in a _Science_ paper
> ca. 1965.

Robert Heath, at Tulane, provided some of the most direct evidence
that the septal region is a "pleasure center" in humans (Heath, 1972;
Moan & Heath, 1972).  But it's hard to say whether he was really
looking at the septal nuclei or at the nucleus accumbens.  Roy Wise
(who works in my building) told me a few months ago that Heath had
once said matter-of-factly to him: "When I was stimulating the
septum...well, _now_ you'd call it the _nucleus accumbens_..."

So I find myself in a state of Schrodingerian uncertainty about what
was being stimulated.

--David

 Heath RG. Pleasure and brain activity in man. Deep and surface
 electroencephalograms during orgasm. Journal of Nervous & Mental
 Disease 154(1): 3-18, Jan 1972.

 Moan, Charles E; Heath, Robert G. Septal stimulation for the
 initiation of heterosexual behavior in a homosexual male. Journal of
 Behavior Therapy & Experimental Psychiatry 3(1): 23-30, Mar 1972.



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