title: Reconsidering Food Reward, Brain Stimulation, and Dopamine: Incentives Act Forward.
abstract: In operant conditioning, rats pressing levers and pigeons pecking keys depend on contingent food reinforcement. Food reward agrees with Skinner's behaviorism, undergraduate textbooks, and folk psychology. However, nearly a century of experimental evidence shows, instead, that food in an operant conditioning chamber acts forward to evoke species-specific feeding behavior rather than backward to reinforce experimenter-defined responses. Furthermore, recent findings in neuroscience show consistently that intracranial stimulation to reward centers and dopamine release, the proposed reward molecule, also act forward to evoke inborn species-specific behavior. These results challenge longstanding views of hedonic learning and must be incorporated into contemporary learning theory.
authors.forename: Gunnar
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Newquist
authors.forename: R Allen
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Gardner
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D004298:Dopamine / Q000502:physiology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005502:Food; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D012201:Reward
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine