Learning triggers the brain’s reward loop
Just yesterday my new editor at OReilly asked me “is there anything that has made the content of A Theory of Fun in need of updating?” And my response was “no, not really…”
That’s because articles like this one keep coming out:
Further experiments on their brains revealed that that the same neurons were signaling the expectation of both water and knowledge, and they were linked to the release of dopamine–a neurotransmitter chemical that’s connected to making you feel rewarded when you achieve a goal.
And that’s incredibly revealing. Because it implies that the primal urge mechanisms that drive us to eat when hungry and drink when thirsty are also directly allied with seeking out new knowledge–it seems we’re actually programmed to gather information.
— Reading Fast Company as Rewarding as Sex, Study Suggests | Technomix | Fast Company.
Digging deeper to the source article shows that the key quote is this one:
…information about a reward is rewarding in itself.
10 Responses to “Learning triggers the brain’s reward loop”
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“it seems we’re actually programmed to gather information.”
we are? by who?
or have we “evolved” to survive longer when more information is gathered to then act or not on?
len asked about science vs technology– this quote above makes my point… we first “praised” a creator for the making of nature, we now “praise” us, since we have the earliest makings of machines that seem to emulate nature…. none of which is about science, but only faith in ones temporary pov.
science looked for evidentery proof through repetition and process.
ok too many posts…
back to the show.
@cube, programmed may be quite accurate (not saying it definitely is though, just that it could be). The answer to by who would be by the neurons themselves. Exposure to sensory input causes neural pathways to develop in a particular way for example, and that development is not inborn, it’s trained. Until the brain has developed pathways to differentiate tones or colors or tactile sensation from specific nerves, it lacks the ability to tell them apart. You can’t move your hand in a certain way unless your brain has developed the right pathways for that motor action to occur in. It has to actually build a program step by step as you constantly try to do the motion until it’s developed the ability to actually pull it off. Many other things we take for granted are also trained pathways. We see things upside down and our brain flips it in our head, but that’s not an automatic process either; if you wear goggles that invert the image that you’re seeing for a long enough period of time you start seeing rightside up again and when you take them off, there’s a similar adjustment period where everything is upside down. The brain constantly reprograms itself.
Similarly, it’s possible that the dopamine releases are not inborn either, but a side effect of another process or the result of early cultural training (cultural evolution plays a role there too, cultures that can survive better propagate certain lessons that get imprinted at young ages and get passed on to the next generation). Or it could be a evolutionary adaptation, sure. But it’s not necessarily wrong to look at brain function and behavior in terms of programmability. In this specific instance, it’s hard to say; our understanding of the functioning of the brain has a lot of holes in it still, so it’s hard to know where the boundaries are in terms of inherent function and programmable function. But it’s possible.
you miss my point….
the word “programmed” is a by product of man machine interactions of the electronic machine technology age.
try using the word “process” instead. the 50k year old brain or the neurons “wont know” the difference;)
neurons as programmers now– geesh… talk about science being dead.-(
If I used the word process, I’d be using the wrong word (there’s a process by which the brain programs itself, but there’s also a process by which it decays, and a process by which it gets oxygen so it can function, and a process by which it processes information, and so on. Which am I talking about?). Training might work, but that has connotations that aren’t wholly appropriate (it works in a literal sense though). Program is much more accurate a verb, and doesn’t have those secondary issues.
Is saying that the heart pumps blood inaccurate because it’s rooted in the idea of a pump, which is a man made object? The fact that language evolves over time to include new words, especially words that are more specific and narrowly defined than their predecessors, hardly means that science is in any way dead.
right, which is why “programming” is what is done by TV network executives;) and using that defination have no coders at all;)
neurons now pick “american idol” for 3 days a week prime time.;)
why do you believe that “trained” is not as “accurate” as “programmed”? answer that and my point is made:)
i suggest you look to the use of “words” of science to describe” intelligent design” and what happens when thinking courts and folks get involved and search for the truth underneath the “words” used to “train” or “program” the next generation of “scientists”;).
its the same expression of an agenda.
Because “trained” as a word is different in it’s connotation. We usually use the word train when there’s some amount of deliberate effort on someone’s part. That sense of effort doesn’t necessarily exist in this case; the brain can pick stuff up by “osmosis”. Simply having stimulus causes a change in pathways, and what you get is closer to a set of rules that evolve over time in a more organic nature than any deliberate attempt to develop a skill or create a set of behaviors. The basic structure is input -> rules are applied -> output. That’s pretty much exactly what computer programmers do. Additionally, training can only be used to refer to the process of development, it cannot be used to express what happens after development has occurred. Programming can cover both, describing both the act by which we adapt to new inputs and the way in which we respond once we’ve developed a given set of pathways.
So the reason I don’t think that trained works as well is because it’s a weaker metaphor. “Programmed” is also a metaphor, as there are still differences between how we program for computers and how the brain works; it just more closely correlates to the actual process. So I’m not sure how that makes *your* point. It’s preferable because it’s less wrong.
If you can suggest another word besides program that encompasses the idea that there are a set of rules that act on input to result in output, we can call it that if you want. I can’t think of anything though, as process doesn’t work there, being too general.
And I’m not sure what your point is with regard to Intelligent Design; there’s no agenda in using a word that’s well suited to explain a process. ID uses fancy words to make a fundamentally unsound proposition sound reasonable. Obviously that doesn’t make it any more sound. But if the proposition is sound though, it doesn’t matter the method by which it’s conveyed. If your brain acts like a dynamic self-adapting program, it’s not wrong to use the word program. And there’s plenty of evidence that it does just that.
Or to put this another way, there’s absolutely no way to describe brain function without referring to circuits, networks, logic gates and other electronic and computer related terms. If we hadn’t discovered these things before looking into how the brain works we would have had to have developed them in order to explain it. For example, the use of the alternating presence and absence of electrical current to generate a specific result is a shared property of our computers and our brains. When I want to move my arm a signal is sent to a network of neurons that then send a specific series of signals to the nerves in my arm that tells the muscles to contract in just such a way so that the arm moves. This is not too dissimilar from a string of ones and zeros telling my computer to input a character when I hit a key on my keyboard. Both deal with the precise processing and application of a series of electronic pulses. It’s only natural that they’d use the same language in their description.
I don’t think “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” needs updating – it does what it does most excellently. But I do believe the “games as learning” camp needs to be understood in a wider context (I just posted on this on ihobo.com last week).
That learning about rewards is rewarding isn’t new research, but remember that things that are rewarding do not need to entail learning. In your book, visceral rewards are brushed under the carpet… For game designers, those rewards are an important part of the task.
But you said it yourself – you chose “A” as the first word in your title for a reason. 🙂
Also, there’s some interesting ground to be explored here in connection with animal training – I touch upon this in the new piece, but there’s more to come when I shake off this damnable cold and can get back to writing.
Best wishes!
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