Addicted to Exercise?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT
FOR decades, scientists have studied areas deep within the brain that seem associated with pleasure and addiction.
Put an electrode in that part of a rat’s brain, and it will become obsessed with stimulating those areas. When rats are allowed to push a lever in exchange for a mild current that produces a “high” in the “pleasure centers,” they will press the lever up to 7,000 times per hour.
These rats forget to eat or drink, and they must be unhooked to prevent self-starvation. Male rats ignore females in heat to get a fix, and nursing mothers ignore their babies.
“Pressing that lever became their entire world,” David J. Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University medical school, writes in his fascinating new book, “The Compass of Pleasure.”
(More here.)
NYT
FOR decades, scientists have studied areas deep within the brain that seem associated with pleasure and addiction.
Put an electrode in that part of a rat’s brain, and it will become obsessed with stimulating those areas. When rats are allowed to push a lever in exchange for a mild current that produces a “high” in the “pleasure centers,” they will press the lever up to 7,000 times per hour.
These rats forget to eat or drink, and they must be unhooked to prevent self-starvation. Male rats ignore females in heat to get a fix, and nursing mothers ignore their babies.
“Pressing that lever became their entire world,” David J. Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University medical school, writes in his fascinating new book, “The Compass of Pleasure.”
(More here.)
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