From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 13:46:19 MDT
Rafal,
> ### You are beating a dead horse. Please peruse my previous posts, so as
to
> avoid straying from the subject (which is, the role of the cortex in the
> subjective experience of pleasure).
If the researchers believed the reward experience had its biological
underpinnings in the cortex, or in the cortex+some other brain organ(s) (as
you claim) then they would have stated as much.
Instead they confirm my position that the reward experience has its
biological underpinnings in the mesolimbic dopamine system.
Some types of reward no doubt involve cortical activation, (e.g, those that
involve any kind of "eureka!" experience). But not all pleasures and rewards
involve such cortical activity.
There is only one common denominator for the experience of reward or
pleasure: activation of the mesolimbic dopamine system. This fact points
very strongly to this part of the brain as the location at which the
experience itself arises, as do the experiements on D2 knockout mice which I
reported (and which you and your "co-worker" dismissed out of hand without
serious investigation.)
If you would accuse the researchers of being wrong or incomplete in their
statements to the effect that the mesolimibic system is the location of the
biological underpinnings of the reward expeience then the burden of proof is
now on you to prove them wrong. Show us any research, Rafal, which would
show that enhanced cortical activity is a necessary condition for the
experience of reward or pleasure. Can you do so? If not then you have no
argument.
-gts
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