Origins and import of reinforcing self-stimulation of the brain

The phenomenon of self-stimulation of the brain was discovered in 1954. This was one of the more important discoveries in behavioral neuroscience and psychology. The present article examines the origins of the phenomenon, describing some of the distal origins briefly, since each has a long history of its own and concentrates on the more proximal origins, including experiments preceding and closely related to the phenomenon and includes an account of the relevant knowledge at that time. A brief description of the events leading to Olds' crucial, if serendipitous, experiment is retold, followed by descriptions of some early experiments that preceded the later voluminous body of work based on it. Finally, some views are expressed about the import of the finding.