Neuroscience
'Adventure Center' Explains Why Brain Craves New Sensations
Left panel taken from Fig. 1 of Wittmann et al. (2008).
How nice. I guess their hard-hitting criticism of the oxytocin media neurohype was short-lived...
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Neuroscience
ABC News Says: 'Trust Drug' Oxytocin Unbelievable For Now
BUT
'Adventure Center' Explains Why Brain Craves New Sensations
Newness Factor Weighs in on BrainBecause choosing a new picture in a psychology experiment is just like intravenous cocaine...
By ALLYSON T. COLLINS
ABC News Medical UnitJune 25, 2008—...Humans may be wired to seek out new experiences, according to a study published Wednesday in the online edition of the journal Neuron [Wittmann et al., 2008]....During the study, [Bianca] Wittmann and her colleagues looked at people's brain activity through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)...When people chose new images, Wittmann says that an area deep in the brain called the ventral striatum lit up on the fMRI scans. The ventral striatum is thought to be involved in emotions and behavior, including addictions."When people shoot up stimulant drugs like cocaine, they tend to trigger activity in this system," [Dr. David] Spiegel says.When activated, nerve cells in the ventral striatum release a chemical called dopamine, which stimulates feelings of enjoyment and pleasure.Even for the average person, not just people who use drugs, Wittmann says that the emotions brought about by the release of dopamine are "a large part of what keeps us going and what makes us get up in the morning"; they are our internal reward system for certain behaviors.It may be these feel-good sensations that caused the participants to keep selecting the new images.
Left panel taken from Fig. 1 of Wittmann et al. (2008).
How nice. I guess their hard-hitting criticism of the oxytocin media neurohype was short-lived...
- People Who Are More Aware Of Their Own Heart-beat Have Superior Time Perception Skills
What underlies our sense of time? A popular account claims an internal pacemaker emits regular pulses, which are detected by an accumulator. The amount of accumulated pulses represents the amount of time that's passed. Trouble is, this is all very...
- Employment Opportunity As A Professional Fmri Subject
Apply now! Or at least, that's the implication of this BBC story about the latest neuroimaging paper (Fliessbach et al., 2007) in Science: Men motivated by 'superior wage' [NOTE: so I guess women aren't, eh? we don't know, since they...
- Parkinson Disease
From an NIH press release on 04 July 2006: Dopamine Drug Leads to New Neurons and Recovery of Function in Rat Model of Parkinson's Disease In preliminary results, researchers have shown that a drug which mimics the effects of...
- Orexin And The Lateral Hypothalamus
From the National Institutes of Health (NIH):FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, August 25, 2005 Researchers Identify a Brain Chemical That Plays a Key Role in Food and Drug-Seeking Behavior New research performed in rats suggests that orexin, a...
- Predicting Stimuli From Fmri Data
Though the headline and subhead they use are unfortunately over-dramatic, this from the BBC:'Thoughts read' via brain scans The researchers monitored activity in the brain. Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts via...