The brain is bliss and hell

The brain is bliss and hell

    In 1954, pioneers Olds and Milner developed a "emotional map" of the mouse brain, saying that about 60% of all of it is neutral, while "paradise" areas occupy 35% of it, just below the "hell" region in the form of a small wedge that forms no more than 5%.

    A form that shows the components of the human brain, among them the centers of "reward" and "punishment" in the brain, which were later renamed as "central and heaven", or "bliss and hell", or "reward and punishment", all of which revolve around the organic premise in The brain feels euphoria as a reward for a behavior, or anguish as a punishment for other behavior.

    On March 6, 2017, news agencies flew the news that three British scientists won the largest prize in neuroscience from the Danish Lundbeck Foundation, amounting to one million euros, in recognition of their promising research into "reward" pathways in the brain. Peter Dayan, Ray Dolan and Wolfram Schultz stated that their victory was the result of their continued passion for knowing how the human brain works, and that they have worked for thirty years on dopamine secretion cells, which are the main component of the "reward" pathways that affect In everything from decision-making, risk-taking and addiction to schizophrenia.

    Despite the merit of these three scholars deserving of this award, their victory should have been honored with the research of two pioneers who preferred to reveal the "reward center" in the brain, sixty-five years ago and with semi-primitive research tools, a story that deserves to be told, not only in fulfillment of the memory of the two pioneers, Rather, it promises to illuminate the beginnings, enlighten the paths of the present, and foresee future horizons.

    In 1954, the researchers, "James Olds" and "Peter Milner" from the University of "McGill", that they found evidence of the existence of the "reward" and "punishment" centers in the brain, which were later renamed the centers of "Heaven and Hell" , Or "bliss and hell", or "reward and punishment", and the synonyms are still heaped on these two centers, and all revolve around the organic starting point in the brain to feel euphoria as a reward for some behavior, or anguish as a punishment for other behavior, which is a huge revelation in that continent that is still Unknowable, the continent of the mind and the soul of man, though that pioneering revelation had begun in the animal's brain, and began with a mistake .

    Peter Milner, a researcher at McGill University, was testing a theory that mice could be pushed into choosing a specific branch of two branches in a T-shaped maze by stimulating a weak electrical charge of the reticular formation region, which acts as a filter between a stem The brain and the thalamus region to regulate the passage of sensory information, and the stimulus charge reached its target through a precise electrode implanted in the brains of experiment mice, but Milner failed to experiment. Instead of turning the experiment mice toward the path in which they were stimulated, they avoided it unanimously.

    At that time, a young researcher in Harvard University’s Social Psychology, “James Olds”, appeared to Milner to be interested in studying the brain, and he was looking for a person like Milner to help him enter this field, but his "literary" background was far from aware The physiological psyche to which Milner belongs, which is why Milner questioned the utility of this "intruder," yet he decided to try it.

    It turns out that Olds was a brilliant, quickly assimilated learner. Within a week of giving him a book on the relationship of limb working to the rat brain, he demonstrated a knowledge that surpassed Milner's own knowledge. Although Olds was sufficient to do the job, he and one mouse let it stick to an adhesive that secures the electrode to the wires before they are bent in the desired direction. The error, which marked the beginning of a historical success in neuroscience, continues until today.

    Olds observed that, unlike the rest of the mice, this mouse, when its brain receives the stimulating charge, advances and raises its head swaying, breathing in the air as deep as the starch-taker. Then he started with "Milner" to put the possibility that the electrode fixed in the brain of this mouse might budge from its position, so they asked for an X-ray image to confirm, and the picture showed that the electrode was already budging several millimeters from the retinal formation in the brain, and became located in the "hypothalamus" region Associated with the limbic system responsible for controlling emotions and sexual activities, they concluded that the signs of enjoyment by the mouse while receiving the stimulating charge, in this region, may mean something .

    Repeat the experiment with several other mice by implanting electrode stimulation electrodes under the hypothalamus, and let the mice themselves determine how to receive the electric charge when their feet press the pedal into the test box, and the results are astonished. The mice, upon discovering that the pressure of this pedal releases in their brains a charge that promotes a sense of enjoyment, urges the repetition of pressure to tire of the enjoyable feeling it feels like as if it is receiving a delightful reward. 

    

    And when they were tempted by success in reaching this discovery, they expanded their fields of research, and they discovered within what they discovered a point under the "reward center" adjacent to it. I committed it, and the researchers called it the "punishment center"! Olds and Milner were not satisfied with their findings. They mentioned in an article we published in the Scientific American in 1956 that they discovered similar results occurring when implanting electrodes in the nucleus accumbens region, which is now known to be one of the main areas in the "reward path" in The human brain is the same as the animal, in which dopamine is released, the neurotransmitter that causes pleasure as a natural reward for good eating and sex, and is also associated with a sense of artificial reward in drug use, especially cocaine . 

    Olds and Milner have developed a "emotional map" of the mouse brain, saying that about 60% of the entire brain is neutral, located far from the deep brain regions, and closer to the surface, while the "paradise" areas occupy 35% and a remarkable density in the hypothalamus at the base The brain, which is located just below it "hell" in the form of a small wedge that makes up no more than 5% of the total brain volume. But it's a burning wedge, the experiment mice with all their behaviors and behavior refused to motivate it! What about a person?

    It is true that the "paradise" area in human brains, as it is in the brains of mice, is welcome and called to stimulate, but the pleasures and ecstasy of its "rewards" are often deceptive and involve "hell", and its clearest models are drugs, whose use of orgasm quickly turns into addiction. killer.

    Research aimed at combating drug addiction has become focused on these two centers in the brain, which are linked to other addictions that involve deceptive rewards no less dangerous than drugs 'rewards', including what relates to insane ecstasy in the illusions of possessing absolute facts, and the subsequent fanatic and authoritarian behaviors that send Its practitioners swell with ecstasy of domination and supremacy, which - like drug addiction - always ends up destroying those who practice it, and the most heinous: it destroys those who practice it.

    One million euros is a prize for recent research related to the discovery of new spectra for the work of reward and punishment regions - or bliss and hell - in the brain, and after sixty-five years have passed since the pioneering discovery of Olds and Milner, it does not mean an appreciation of new researchers alone, but rather honors leading researchers on the first step in the path It opens up horizons that are not unlimited, in realizing the sources of animal and human behavior and fate, to enhance the aging of them and avoid the destructive. It is also exemplified in the history of the human longing to know himself, and surround it, with knowledge, and ... for knowledge.