craschworks

History of Economic Thought.

Via Gene Expression

http://www.syberpunk.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=nasubi

NASUBI – By Ed Jacob

Nippon Television's (NTV) producers have obviously never heard of the Geneva Convention. If they had, they wouldn't have treated poor Nasubi the way they did. They wouldn't have stripped him naked and shut him in an apartment, alone with no food, furniture, household goods, or entertainment. They wouldn't have kept him there for over a year until he had won $10 000 in prizes by sending in postcards to contests. They wouldn't have cut him off from the world and they would have told him that he was on nation-wide TV.

It all started one snowy day in January, 1998 with an audition. The audition consisted of choosing lots because the only talent needed for this challenge was luck. A group of aspiring comedians showed up, and among them was a young man whose stage name is Nasubi, which means eggplant. Nasubi was 'lucky' that day, and was chosen over other aspiring young comedians for a mysterious “show-business related job”. He was immediately blindfolded and driven to a tiny one room apartment somewhere in Tokyo.

When he arrived at the apartment, he was shown a stand full of magazines, a huge pile of postcards, and told to strip naked. The room was empty except for a cushion, a table, a small radio, a telephone, some notebooks, and a few pens. There was not a crumb of food, a square of toilet paper, or any form of entertainment. Whatever he needed, he was to win by sending thousands of postcards into contests. The producers left and Nasubi was on his own in his unique survival challenge. Imagine what was going through his mind: How am I going to eat? Why are they doing this to me? How long will it take to get out of here? He must have thought he was in a bad episode of The Prisoner.

Nasubi won his first contest on February 8th. He got some jelly, a 1560 yen value, leaving him with 998 440 yen left to win. That day, he ate food for the first time in two weeks! On February 22nd, he won a 5 kg bag of rice. Unfortunately, he had no cooking utensils. At first he tried eating it raw, but eventually devised a cooking method where he put it in an empty can beside a burner for an hour until it was “cooked”. He ate about a half cup of rice a day using two pens for chopsticks.

Life was tough for Nasubi–he was obviously lonely, uncomfortable and bored but he seemed to be continually cheerful in the face of adversity. Putting on a bold face when one is suffering is one of the most admired traits in Japan and this was a big reason for the program's incredible popularity. He spent his days writing postcards, and sent out between 3000 and 8000 a month! It must have been incredibly discouraging because by the end of March, he had only won 66,840 yen, leaving him with 933,160 yen left to win.

Every time Nasubi won a contest, he did a victory dance and made up a strange song about the prize he had won and how happy he was. You've never seen anyone's face light up the way Nasubi's did when he heard a knock at the door or the telephone rang. In this picture below we see him celebrating after he won a poster of his favourite TV star, an attractive young woman named Ryoko Hirose. His apartment was gradually filling up and he was beginning to live something resembling a human life. Of course there were some bad moments too, especially the day he won a TV but realized his apartment had no antennae or cable!

A doctor's visit in May, after five months in the room, revealed Nasubi to be in perfect health! No scurvy, no fleas or lice, and no signs of malnutrition. He had lost a lot of weight, and his ribs were showing through his skin, but his blood tests and a physical examination revealed no other problems. His fingernails had grown to several inches long and his hair and beard were getting rather unmanageable by that time, but they were annoyances rather than dangers. It's incredible what the human body can survive and how resilient people are. Who would have thought that it was possible to live like that?

Near the end of May, Nasubi's rice ran out, and he was reduced to eating dog food. It was heart wrenching seeing him prey every night for rice.

By June, the show had become incredibly popular and the mass media had found out where Nasubi was staying. In the middle of the night, he was awakened by a producer with a flashlight, blindfolded and moved to a new apartment. He was told that it was to “change his luck” but the real reason was that the producers were worried he would find out that the entire nation was watching him. Unfortunately, the people who moved his things to the new apartment forgot to bring his rice! One of the few times we got to see Nasubi really angry was when he said, “How could you forget my rice??? How could you? Don't you know how important my rice is?” He seemed to be on the point of breaking.

By the end of June, his total had reached 550 000 yen, halfway to his goal of one million yen!

In July, a live internet feed to Nasubi's room was set up. Because he was nude, they needed a staff of 50 to maintain the site and control the ever-present dot over Nasubi's private parts. Until this time, some people had thought the whole thing was fake, but the live internet feed convinced everyone that the show was not being staged. The site was incredibly popular and received thousands of hits everyday. Part of the reason the show and live internet feed were so popular was because he played with everything he won. He often talked to a stuffed animal that he won and named Venus, or rolled around on the set car tires.

August and September were some of the toughest months. He went for two weeks in August without winning a single contest, and most of the things he won in September had almost no value and he advanced only about 10 000 yen that month. One happy moment in September was his “Summer Holiday” at the beach (naked of course). It was felt that having spent eight months in the apartment, he needed to get out. In October he moved again.

When he won a video deck to go with his TV, he was able to watch his two videos–an exercise video and a cycling tape. He saw a woman for the first time in 10 months. In November, he won two rolls of toilet paper, a huge moment in his life! He also won a Sony Play Station, which went well with the train driving game, and special controller he had won earlier and he spent hours in front of the TV. He spent about three days playing with it and then decided that he was wasting too much time playing with it.

Nasubi's first ordeal ended in December. The thing that put him over the top was, of course, a bag of rice. Unfortunately, he didn't know that he had won and continued writing postcards. That night, he was paid another visit by the producer, who crept in with Christmas crackers to wake him up in the middle of the night. There was nothing congratulatory in the producer's manner as he refused to answer Nasubi's questions, and continued setting off the Christmas Cracker's until Nasubi realized that he had successfully completed his challenge. Nasubi was curled up into a foetal position, and seemed unused to talking to other people.

Finally, he was given back his clothes, and for the first time in a year, he knew what it was like to wear clothes other than women's underwear. They gave him a bowl of ramen, and let him out on the street. They also took him to an amusement park and to Korea to eat his favourite food, Korean barbecue. After his 'rest' was over, he found himself back in a room, all alone again, but this time in Korea, a country whose language he could neither speak nor write! This time however, his goal was to earn his airfare home. It was about $400 US.

He won the required money by getting a TV, expensive food and other prizes relatively quickly, so the staff made his challenge more and more difficult (without telling him) and decided that he would have to get a business class and then a first class ticket. Nasubi began to become suspicious that Nasubi must have achieved his goal so the producer paid him another visit. He was finally flown back to Japan.

This time, they took him into a Television studio, and led him in a box that he thought was a room. Out of habit, he took off his clothes and waited. Suddenly, the walls of the 'room' fell down and the 'ceiling' was raised. He found himself naked in front of a thousand cheering fans and the hosts of Denpa Shonen came out and explained everything that had been happening over the last year and three months to him.

He was told that his diary had become a number one best seller grossing hundreds of thousands of yen, that when he ate the bowl of Ramen at the end of his ordeal in Japan the footage had been used in an immensely popular TV commercial, and that he his web site had grossed huge amounts of money.

Some things that Nasubi won during his year and three months of “Living off contests”:

2 vacuums, rice (4 times, 35 kg), shoes, a watermelon, a cutlery set, ice cream, chocolates, natto (twice), bicycle, television (no antennae in the apartment), a globe, stuffed animals, dental care products, videos, pickled egg plant, a poster of Hirose Ryoko, free tickets to the Spice Girls movie, a coupon for a free English lesson (twice), headphones, a CD Rom, videos, a huge box of potato chips, duck meat, a barbecue, several unidentifiable varieties of Japanese snacks, a belt, some sexy women's underwear (which he tried to wear but couldn't put on), Matsutake mushrooms, steak, a tent, an attache case, a set of tires, a photo book, golf balls

Some things that Nasubi never won during his year and three months of “Living off contests”

Clothes, plates, soap, books, a bed or futon, sheets and blankets, pots or pans

So what was the point of the Nasubi experiment? Ostensibly, it was to test the thesis that contests had become so ubiquitous that it would be possible to live entirely on what one had won in them. This was called kensho seikatsu (Living off contests).

Of course the real reason is that programs involving human suffering are extremely popular in Japan. The gambaru genre, started in the 1980's with the immensely popular show Za Gaman, a show in which university students competed in contests to see who could stand the most pain, eat the most unpleasant foods, and perform the most humiliating tasks. Denpa Shonen is a logical continuation of this trend, and the stunts are becoming more and more dangerous/appalling.

Someday a Japanese comedian is going to die in a horrible accident and this sort of program will be immediately pulled from the airwaves. People are travelling through dangerous countries, fighting bulls without any training, scaring the life out of innocent victims and playing incredibly cruel practical jokes. It's inevitable that a tragic accident will happen. There will be condemnations and recriminations, and people will say that they never liked them, knew they were dangerous, and definitely never watched them. But almost everybody is watching them because they are fascinating.

First of all, they are hilarious. Even people who hate the idea of them usually can't help laughing if they watch them. You also sympathise with the comedians and feel sorry for them because they seem to be victims of the evil TV producers or their circumstances, but never think about how you, the viewer who is increasing the show's ratings are actually responsible. The shows are funny, and in a strange way, educational too. A lot of people learned about what humans are and are not capable of by watching Nasubi. People like to be shocked, they get addicted by the suspense, and they love rooting for the suffering individual when they get close to achieving their goal.

If you want to see Nasubi for yourself, go to your local video store (in Japan) and it will be in the comedy section.

- Ed Jacob

Via :

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/health/womenshealth/23KOLA.html?tntemail1

Weights Build Muscles, but Not the Manly Kind
By GINA KOLATA

S any woman who has ventured into a health club knows, the weight-lifting area is very much a male domain. The rubber-surfaced nonslip floor where the barbells and dumbbells reside is dominated by hefty men, grunting and groaning as they pump iron. Most women steer clear, clustering instead in the group exercise classes, taking yoga or step aerobics.

And that, medical experts say, can be a mistake, at least for women who want to reshape their bodies. While cardiovascular exercise like running can help the heart and burn calories, the best way for women to change their look is to lift weights — heavy weights.

“To really reshape yourself, you have to hypertrophy muscles,” said Dr. William J. Kraemer, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, referring to the medical term for muscle growth. Dr. Kraemer was the principal author of a new position paper on weight lifting for the American College of Sports Medicine and is the editor of a leading research journal on weight lifting, The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

There are also health benefits, said Dr. Claude Bouchard, the director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University. If men or women work sufficiently hard at weight training, the muscle they build is more efficient, with more mitochondria, which are the cell's energy factories. The muscle is also better at using fat for fuel and better at allowing people to use insulin to clear sugar from the blood, which reduces their susceptibility to diabetes.

Studies also show that weight lifting can help with problems of aging. Investigators at the National Institute of Aging found that older people with osteoarthritis of the knee had less pain and improved mobility when they strengthened their leg muscles, working on those that support the knee. And, researchers say, weight lifting can stave off the sort of muscle wasting that forces older people to grab a chair handle for support when they rise.

One problem that women face, however, is that they are hobbled by myths about weight lifting, expecting the wrong things and, sometimes, expecting too much, exercise physiologists say.

The worst myth, these researchers stress, is that women who lift weights risk growing muscles like a man's.

Dr. Gary A. Dudley, an exercise physiologist at the University of Georgia and an author of the American College of Sports Medicine's statement on weight lifting, says he tries to dispel that notion by telling women to look around the gym at the women who are lifting heavy weights.

“That's the simplest answer — just look around,” he said. “There's a girl who works in my lab who does pull-ups like a yo-yo. She does not have 26-inch arms like Arnold used to have,” he said, referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger. “They're just not there.”

Somehow, that message has not reached the general public, Dr. Kraemer said. Even his 22-year-old daughter believed it, asking Dr. Kraemer to help her and her friends by suggesting a program that would help them get fit without getting big.

Even women who are genetically capable of growing big muscles can never grow ones as large as a man's, Dr. Kraemer said. When researchers biopsied the muscles of female bodybuilders, who spend hours each day lifting weights, “They had smaller muscle fibers than the average male,” Dr. Kraemer said. “And these were women who were taking drugs” to increase their muscle mass, he added.

“A lot of women are just sitting there with a 10-pound weight,” Dr. Kraemer said. “It's better than nothing, but they're really taking a second-class program. A lot of them are dramatically undercutting themselves.”

Even building bone requires that muscles be stressed, researchers say. They explain that bones have receptors that respond to demands on muscle, and weights can signal those receptors.

“Studies showed that stair climbing can help your bones — but the women wore weighted vests,” Dr. Kraemer said.

If the muscles-like-a-man myth discourages women from starting to lift heavy weights, other myths can discourage women from continuing, physiologists say. These are the myths that lead women to expect too much from resistance training and encourage them to give up when the benefits do not emerge.

One problem is expecting immediate results.

“It takes a lot of time to develop muscle,” Dr. Kraemer said. “Most people want to have it happen in the first few months, but it takes three months or longer, usually three to six months,” before a person looks much different, he added.

Forget the idea of spot reducing, researchers say, like “toning” the muscles of the inner thighs, for example, and slimming them. “Spot reducing is not a real thing,” Dr. Kraemer said.

Many women also cling to a belief that is almost an act of faith among exercisers: muscle burns more calories than fat. Therefore weight lifting, by building muscle, will noticeably increase the body's metabolism.

Sorry, said Dr. Bouchard, who is directing a national study on the genetic inheritance of an ability to train with aerobic exercises. He said that weight lifting had virtually no effect on resting metabolism. The reason is that any added muscle is minuscule compared with the total amount of skeletal muscle in the body. And muscle actually has a very low metabolic rate when it is at rest, which is most of the time.

SKELETAL muscle, Dr. Bouchard said, burns about 13 calories per kilogram of body weight over 24 hours when a person is at rest. A typical man who weighs 70 kilograms, or 154 pounds, has about 28 kilograms of skeletal muscle. His muscles, when he is at rest, burn about 22 percent of the calories his body uses. The brain would use about the same number of calories, as would the liver, Dr. Bouchard said. If the man lifts weights and gains 2 kilograms, or 4.4 pounds of muscle, his metabolic rate would increase by 24 calories a day.

Dr. Jack Wilmore, an exercise physiologist at Texas A&M University, said that the average amount of muscle that men gained after lifting weights for 12 weeks was 2 kilograms, or about 4.4 pounds. Women, of course, will gain much less.

A corollary to the hypothesis that you burn more calories simply by adding muscle is the belief that muscle can noticeably change your body weight. The idea is that when you do resistance training you may actually be thinner yet weigh the same or a little more, because muscle is heavier than fat.

That holds a grain of truth, because muscle is more dense than fat. But, Dr. Bouchard said, the problem is that few people put on enough muscle in proportion to their total body mass to make a noticeable difference in their weight. The idea that you will weigh the same or more but you really are thinner may be true if you work hard at weight lifting for many months, but otherwise it is another myth.

But when it comes to weight lifting, researchers also confess that they have not answered some age-old questions. Why, for example, do muscles feel sore a day or two after they are stressed?

One possibility is that they get damaged, with tiny tears ensuing from the work of lifting weights. But, said Prof. Stanley Salmons, a muscle researcher at the University of Liverpool, “damage and pain have different time courses, and they respond differently to repeated bouts of exercise.” He added that delayed muscle soreness remained a mystery. “At this moment I do not know why muscles get sore, and no one else does either.”

It is also unclear how to prevent soreness. “You hear trainers say it's very important to stretch before exercise,” Dr. Salmons said. “But there were experiments in which people did exercise with or without stretching, and it didn't seem to make much difference.”

As for the techniques of weight lifting — how often, machines or free weights, in what order to do the exercises, how quickly to lift a weight, how long to wait between sets — the research is equivocal.

But, Dr. Kraemer said, those are details that should not concern most people. Despite the fervent marketing of programs and the magical properties attributed to various regimens, there is little difference in the results of varying resistance training systems, he said. What matters is keeping the weights heavy enough to stress the muscles, exercising consistently and working every major muscle group.

“Think of yourself as being on a continuum,” Dr. Kraemer said. “At the beginning, when you are out of shape, just about anything can work.”

And you thought Johne Deere only made Tractors. Be sure to check out the videos.

http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/ARUreport01.htm

From M.A. Bozarth (1994). Pleasure systems in the brain. In D.M. Warburton (ed.), Pleasure: The politics and the reality (pp. 5-14 + refs). New York: John Wiley & Sons. (Note: Minor typographical errors appearing in the published version have been corrected.)

Pleasure Systems in the Brain
Michael A. Bozarth
Behavioral Neuroscience Program
Department of Psychology
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14260-4110 USA
Neurological research has identified a biological mechanism mediating behavior motivated by events commonly associated with pleasure in humans. These events are termed “rewards” and are viewed as primary factors governing normal behavior. The subjective impact of rewards (e.g., pleasure) can be considered essential (e.g., Young, 1959) or irrelevant (e.g., Skinner, 1953) to their effect on behavior, but the motivational effect of rewards on behavior is universally acknowledged by experimental psychologists.

Motivation & Reward
Motivation can be considered under two general rubrics—appetitive and aversive motivation. Appetitive motivation concerns behavior directed toward goals that are usually associated with positive hedonic processes; food, sex, and wine are three such goal objects. Aversive motivation involves escaping from some hedonically unpleasant condition; the pain from a headache, the chill from a cold winter night are among the list of conditions that give rise to aversive motivation. The notion that hedonic mechanisms might provide direction to behavior can be traced at least to the Greeks (e.g., Epicures); Spencer (1880) formalized this notion into psychological theory and suggested that two fundamental forces governed motivation–pleasure and pain. Troland (1928) suggested that pleasure was associated with beneception, events that contributed to the survival of the organism (or species) and thus 'benefited' the organism from an evolutionary biology perspective; pain was suggested to be associated with nociception, events that had undesirable consequences for the organism. This schema—emphasizing hedonic processes in the regulation of behavior—lost favor with the advance of the Freudian and later behavioristic schools, although variations on this theme have occasionally resurfaced among motivational psychologists (e.g., Bindra, 1969; Young, 1959).
Behaviorism traditionally rejects the notion that subjective experience has a critical role in determining behavior. Specifically, behaviorism describes the relationship between behavior and external factors governing that behavior without reference to internal states, albeit it does help to have a hungry (i.e., food deprived) rat when studying the ability of food to serve as a reward. Behaviorism, or more properly operant conditioning theory, postulates three fundamental principles of behavior—positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment. Positive reinforcement describes the situation where presentation of some stimulus event (e.g., food) increases the probability or frequency of the behavior it follows. Negative reinforcement describes the situation where the termination of some stimulus event (e.g., electric shock) increases the probability or frequency of the behavior its termination follows. Both positive and negative reinforcers increase behavioral responses; they differ in the temporal relationship between the behavior and the reinforcing event—positive reinforcers follow the behavior they reinforce, while negative reinforcers precede the behavior they reinforcement. (In colloquial terms, the organism is said to work to receive a positive reinforcer and to work to escape from a negative reinforcer.) Punishment is the third general principle of operant conditioning. Punishment describes the situation where presentation of an aversive stimulus following a behavior decreases the probability or frequency of that behavior. Unlike reinforcers, punishers suppress behavior. Radical behaviorism describes the effects of reinforcement and punishment on behavior devoid of their subjective impact. Indeed, the emotional states associated with reinforcement and punishment are usually viewed as the result of behavioral conditioning and not a cause of behavior.

In general, events that serve as positive reinforcers produce approach behavior defined as appetitive motivation. Events that serve as negative reinforcers or punishers produce withdrawal behavior defined as aversive motivation. Positive reinforcement is usually associated with a pleasant hedonic impact (and hence frequently termed reward connoting this pleasant affective component), while negative reinforcement and punishment are usually associated with an unpleasant hedonic impact. Whether the subjective experience of reward (viz., pleasure) plays an important role in determining behavior is moot for the present discussion. The same principles apply whether the emotional impact of a reward precedes or follows the behavioral response. Furthermore, events that serve as positive reinforcers in humans and other animals are generally described by humans as pleasant; thus, there is an intimate association between reward and pleasure despite controversy regarding the role of the subjective experience of pleasure in determining behavior.

A Biological Basis of Appetitive Motivation and Reward
Physiological psychology research has identified separate but interactive neural pathways mediating reward and aversion (i.e., functioning as positive and negative reinforcement systems, respectively). Direct activation of brain reward mechanisms through electrical and chemical stimulation provides a tool for elucidating these neural systems. During the past four decades, considerable knowledge has been gained regarding the anatomical and neurochemical basis of these pathways. This brief presentation addresses only brain mechanisms involved in positive reinforcement because they are closely identified with pleasure in humans and because they underlie the primary process governing much of normal behavior.
Reward Substrate Identified by Electrical Brain Stimulation
Olds and Milner (1954) first identified brain sites where direct electrical stimulation is reinforcing. Laboratory animals will lever press at high rates (> 6,000 times per hour) to obtain brief stimulation pulses to certain brain regions. The reinforcement from direct electrical activation of this reward substrate is more potent than other rewards, such as food or water. The potency of this electrical stimulation is most dramatically illustrated in a classic experiment where the subjects suffered self-imposed starvation when forced to make a choice between obtaining food and water or electrical brain stimulation (Routtenberg & Lindy, 1965). A second distinguishing feature of reward from electrical brain stimulation is the lack of satiation; animals generally respond continuously, taking only brief breaks from lever pressing to obtain the electrical stimulation. These two features (i.e., super-potent reward and lack of satiation) are important characteristics of direct activation of brain reward mechanisms.
Initial work suggested that a number of brain regions could produce rewarding effects, but many of these seemingly diverse stimulation sites were quickly linked through a common neural pathway—the medial forebrain bundle (Olds, 1977). Although it is true that activation of other brain systems can produce rewarding effects, activation of the medial forebrain bundle as it courses through the lateral hypothalamus to the ventral tegmentum produces the most robust rewarding effects. And several neurotransmitters may be involved in the rewarding effects from various electrode placements, but dopamine appears to be the neurotransmitter essential for reward from activation of the medial forebrain bundle system (see Fibiger & Phillips, 1979; Wise, 1978). The neuroanatomical elements of rewarding stimulation have been identified using electrophysiological and neurochemical techniques: electrical stimulation activates a descending component of the medial forebrain bundle which is synaptically coupled at the ventral tegmentum to the ascending mesolimbic dopamine system. Rewarding electrical stimulation thus activates a circuitous reward pathway, first involving a descending medial forebrain bundle component and then involving the ascending mesolimbic dopamine pathway (Bozarth, 1987a; Wise, & Bozarth, 1984). The terms mesolimbic and ventral tegmental dopamine system are used interchangeably in this context, both denoting the same dopamine system involved in reward and motivation.

Research with laboratory animals generally uses an operant conditioning perspective when studying reward processes (viz., without reference to possible subjective effects), but research in human subjects has revealed that comparable electrical brain stimulation is associated with profoundly pleasurable effects (e.g., Heath, 1964). Indeed, some experimental subjects liken the effect of electrical brain stimulation to intense sexual orgasm, and anecdotal reports suggest that human subjects have developed a strong romantic attraction to the researchers performing the experiments. For obvious ethical reasons, research with human subjects has been very limited. But the available data suggest that the principles learned from animal experimentation are valid for human subjects; studies of electrical stimulation of reward pathways in humans provide direct evidence that stimulation that is reinforcing in animals is both reinforcing and intensely pleasurable in humans.

Reward Substrate Identified by Chemical Brain Stimulation
Another approach to studying brain reward systems is to determine the neurochemical coding of these pathways. This can be accomplished by identifying the neurochemical mechanisms whereby various drugs serve as rewards following either systemic or intracranial administration. Essentially, reinforcing drugs can be used as tools for studying brain reward mechanisms in much the same manner as electrical stimulation. Experimental procedures have been developed where animals can lever press to obtain various drug rewards (see Bozarth, 1987b).
Some drugs delivered intravenously can serve as rewards. Most drugs that are self-administered by humans are also self-administered by laboratory animals. The most potent drug rewards include the psychomotor stimulants (e.g., amphetamine, cocaine) and the opiates (heroin, morphine). These drugs are self-administered by laboratory animals that have surgically implanted intravenous catheters. Animals quickly learn to press a lever to intravenously self-administer drugs such as cocaine and heroin. This experimental preparation provides an animal model of human drug-taking behavior and hence a method to study the reinforcing properties of drugs; this reinforcing drug-action forms the basis for drug addiction in humans (see Bozarth, 1987b, 1990). It is important to note that addiction is defined as a behavioral syndrome where a drug seems to exert extreme control over the individual's behavior and is not defined by physiological withdrawal reactions such as those accompanying abstinence from some drugs. Drug use is seen as developing along a continuum, beginning with casual/recreational use where the drug has a modest influence on behavior to the extreme condition (i.e., addiction) where the drug use seems to dominate the individual's behavior (see Bozarth, 1990).

Reward from psychomotor stimulants and from opiates appears to involve activation of the same brain reward system as that activated by electrical stimulation. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter most consistently linked with reward from these drugs, and the ventral tegmental dopamine system has been specifically implicated in psychomotor stimulant and opiate rewards. Other drugs that may serve as reinforcers (e.g., alcohol, barbiturates, caffeine, marijuana, nicotine) also activate the ventral tegmental dopamine system, although the data suggesting this activation is critical for their reinforcing effects are not conclusive. Furthermore, abstinence from cocaine or from morphine after repeated administration may decrease dopamine levels in this brain system (Bozarth, 1989; Rossetti, Hmaidan, & Gessa, 1992); this diminished dopamine function may be related to the intense craving associated with withdrawal in drug dependent humans. The subjective experience of craving is probably related to relapse into drug-taking behavior following abstinence and therefore is an important factor in drug addiction.

Integrative Aspects of the Ventral Tegmental “Reward” System
Research has progressed to where several distinct rewarding events can be explained by their abilities to activate a common brain reward mechanism: electrical brain stimulation reward, psychomotor stimulant reward, and opiate reward all appear to involve activation of the ventral tegmental dopamine system (Bozarth, 1987a; Wise & Bozarth, 1984). Several other drug rewards, such as alcohol and nicotine, may also involve activation of this brain pathway. This has lead to the assertion that various addictive drugs share the common feature of activating the same brain reward system and this action has been related to their appetitive motivational effects (Wise & Bozarth, 1987). This theoretical perspective deviated sharply from prevailing thought in that (i) it suggested a common neural basis for two distinctively different pharmacological drug classes (i.e., psychomotor stimulants and opiates) and (ii) it suggested that appetitive motivation rather than aversive motivation (such as that associated with physical dependence and overt withdrawal reactions) motivated drug-taking behavior and addiction. From this perspective, addictive drugs are seen to pharmacologically activate brain reward mechanisms involved in the control of normal behavior (see Bozarth, 1990; Wise & Bozarth, 1987). Thus, addictive drugs may be used as tools to study brain mechanisms involved in normal motivational and reward processes.
Other, natural rewards can be modulated by the activity of this system: feeding can be elicited (Hamilton & Bozarth, 1988), sexual behavioral can be aroused (Mitchell & Stewart, 1990), and maternal behavior can be facilitated (Thompson & Kristal, 1992) by opiate activation of this reward system. The origin of the ventral tegmental dopamine system (i.e., ventral tegmentum) appears to provide an important neurochemical interface where exogenous opiates (e.g., heroin, morphine) and endogenous opioid peptides (e.g., endorphins, enkephalins) can activate a brain mechanism involved in appetitive motivation and reward. These and other empirical findings are consistent with the notion that the ventral tegmental dopamine system may serve as an appetitive motivation system for diverse behaviors. This is not to suggest that all motivational effects of these rewards emanate from this single brain system, but rather this dopamine system represents one important mechanism for the control of both normal and pathological behaviors. (For a more technical review, see Bozarth, 1987a, 1991).

The hypothesized activation of the ventral tegmental reward system by endogenous opioid peptides can offer an explanation of seemingly paradoxical behavior—the voluntary self-infliction of stress or pain. Events normally considered stressful and thus aversive may activate the ventral tegmental reward system through the release of endogenous opioid peptides induced by the stressor. (Stress-induced release of endogenous opioid peptides was one of the earliest identified effects for these neuromodulators.) This could explain the attraction some individuals display to seemingly aversive stimulation (e.g., risk-taking behavior, self-infliction of painful stimuli). In some situations the appetitive motivational effect of these behaviors may override the normal aversive motivational effect that usually produces withdrawal behavior; thus in certain pathological conditions, approach behavior indicative of appetitive motivation may be produced by an aversive stimulus normally avoided and described as painful. This is most likely perhaps in situations where the effects of the stress-induced endogenous opioid peptide release out last the abrupt termination of the painful stimulus. Also, cognitive processes may label the stressor as nonthreatening, thereby permitting the pleasurable effects to dominate affective tone.

The Pursuit of Pleasure: When Does it Become Pathological?
Activation of brain reward systems can be considered a natural component of normal behavior. Indeed, brain reward systems serve to direct the organism's behavior toward goals that are normally beneficial and promote survival of the individual (e.g., food and water intake) or the species (e.g., reproductive behavior) as suggested by Troland's (1928) concept of beneception. The notion that the brain influences behavior is not particularly radical for twentieth century scientists nor is the notion that many rewards activate such mechanisms through various sense modalities such as taste or touch. The direct chemical activation of these reward pathways does not in itself represent any severe departure from the normal control reward systems exert over behavior. Inhalation of a substance (e.g., nicotine) is no less natural than the ingestion of sugar, although the former has no direct survival value to the organism nor to the species. But both involve activation of brain reward mechanisms and both may be subjectively experienced as pleasurable in humans. So what constitutes the pathological control of behavior termed “addiction?” Certainly not the fact that a substance activates a brain reward system nor the fact that this same system may be involved in the potent reward produced by addictive drugs. Simple activation of brain reward systems does not constitute addiction! Rather, the extreme control of behavior—exemplified by a deterioration in the ability of normal rewards to govern behavior (termed motivational toxicity)—is the distinguishing feature of an addiction. Some drugs quickly and uniformly exert extreme control over behavior (e.g., cocaine, heroin), while other substances exert a much less potent influence on behavior (e.g., moderate alcohol consumption, occasional nicotine use). The fact that a chemical (e.g., nicotine) influences behavior does not constitute addiction any more than the chemical reaction that produces a taste (e.g., sugar-associated sweetness) which influences behavior constitutes addiction.
Motivational toxicity is apparent when rewards normally effective in influencing behavior lose their ability to motivate the organism. This is typically seen in human drug addicts that neglect formerly potent rewards (e.g., career, sex) and focus their behavior on the acquisition and ingestion of drug. The neural mechanisms responsible for this disruption of the motivational hierarchy have not been identified; one potential mechanism involves decreased dopaminergic function following chronic drug use (see Bozarth, 1989). In a reward system with decreased dopaminergic function, natural rewards that activate reward processes much less potently than some drug rewards (e.g., cocaine, heroin) may lose their abilities to engage the organism's behavior. In contradistinction, direct pharmacological activation of a reward system dominates the organism's motivational hierarchy at the expense of other rewards that promote survival. The ensuing motivational toxicity distinguishes drug addiction from simple drug activation of reward mechanisms. Motivational toxicity may develop from neuroadaptive responses to chronic intake of some drugs, but it is not a general property of chemical activation of brain reward mechanisms.

Epilogue on the Role of Pleasure
Brain systems involved in what the behaviorist terms positive reinforcement are also involved in the sensation of pleasure in humans. Although radical behaviorism ignores the hedonic impact of positive reinforcers, the subjective experience of pleasure is a usual concomitant of positive reinforcement. Because humans most often describe their own behavior in terms of subjective experience instead of the behavioristic terms of operant conditioning theory (e.g., positive reinforcement), it is appropriate to use reward and pleasure as descriptors of events governing human behavior. Indeed, the phrase introduced by Olds (1956), “pleasure centers in the brain,” remains generally descriptive of the neural basis of reward, but the word center (suggesting a single neuroanatomical focus) has been replaced by the word systems (emphasizing multiple neural elements) as additional neural linkages have been identified.
Appetitive motivation is most often associated with goals that have benefited the species from an evolutionary biology perspective. Specialized brain systems have evolved that direct the organism toward historically beneficial goals, and these systems could be termed pleasure systems in colloquial language. Whether the sensation of pleasure is a critical determinant of behavior or a simple concomitant of reward activation remains to be resolved: appetitive motivational is intimately linked with the subjective experience of pleasure.

Much of behavior can be explained by simple processes of approaching pleasant stimuli and avoiding painful stimuli as described by Spencer (1880) in the nineteenth century. The ventral tegmental dopamine system is an important neural substrate for reward, and it has a central role in regulating appetitive motivation: several distinct rewarding events activate this reward system, and activation of this system elicits appetitive motivation. The ventral tegmental dopamine system, along with its various neural inputs and outputs, can be aptly designated a “pleasure system in the brain” with an important role regulating many normal and pathological behaviors.

Selected Bibliography
Bindra, D. (1969). A unified interpretation of emotion and motivation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 159: 1071-1083.
Bozarth, M.A. (1987a). Ventral tegmental reward system. In L. Oreland and J. Engel (eds.), Brain Reward Systems and Abuse (pp. 1-17). New York: Raven Press.

Bozarth, M.A. (1987b). (ed.) Methods of Assessing the Reinforcing Properties of Abused Drugs. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Bozarth, M.A. (1989). New perspectives on cocaine addiction: Recent findings from animal research. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology 67: 1158-1167.

Bozarth, M.A. (1990). Drug addiction as a psychobiological process. In D.M. Warburton (ed.), Addiction Controversies (pp. 112-134). London: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Bozarth, M.A. (1991). The mesolimbic dopamine system as a model reward system. In P. Willner and J. Scheel-Krüger (eds.), The Mesolimbic Dopamine System: From Motivation to Action (pp. 301-330). London: John Wiley & Sons.

Fibiger, H.C. & Phillips, A.G. (1979). Dopamine and the neural mechanisms of reinforcement. In A.S. Horn, B.H.C. Westerink, and J. Korf (eds.), The Neurobiology of Dopamine (pp. 597-615). New York: Academic Press.

Hamilton, M.E. & Bozarth, M.A. (1988). Feeding elicited by dynorphin(1-13) microinjections into the ventral tegmental area in rats. Life Sciences 43: 941-946.

Heath, R.G. (1964). Pleasure response of human subjects to direct stimulation of the brain: Physiologic and psychodynamic considerations. In R.G. Heath (ed.), The Role of Pleasure in Human Behavior (pp. 219-243). New York: Hoeber.

Mitchell, J.B. & Stewart, J. (1990). Facilitation of sexual behaviors in the male rat associated with intra-VTA injections of opiates. Pharmacology Biochemistry & Behavior 33: 643-650.

Olds, J. (1956). Pleasure centers in the brain. Scientific American (October, 1956). Reprinted in S. Coopersmith (ed.), Frontiers of Psychological Research (pp. 54-59). San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Company (1966).

Olds, J. (1977). Drives and reinforcements: Behavioral Studies of Hypothalamic Functions. New York: Raven Press.

Olds, J. & Milner, P. (1954). Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47: 419-427.

Rossetti, Z.L., Hmaidan, Y., & Gessa, G.L. (1992). Marked inhibition of mesolimbic dopamine release: A common feature of ethanol, morphine, cocaine and amphetamine abstinence in rats. European Journal of Pharmacology 221: 227-234.

Routtenberg, A. & Lindy, J. (1965). Effects of the availability of rewarding septal and hypothalamic stimulation on bar pressing for food under conditions of deprivation. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 60: 158-161.

Skinner, B.F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan.

Spencer, H. (1880). Principles of Psychology. New York: Appleton.

Thompson, A.C. & Kristal, M.B. (1992). Opioids in the ventral tegmental area facilitate the onset of maternal behavior in the rat. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 18: 659.

Troland, L.T. (1928). The Fundamentals of Human Motivation. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Wise, R.A. (1978). Catecholamine theories of reward: A critical review. Brain Research 152: 215-247.

Wise, R.A. & Bozarth, M.A. (1984). Brain reward circuitry: Four circuit elements “wired” in apparent series. Brain Research Bulletin 297: 265-273.

Wise, R.A. & Bozarth, M.A. (1987). A Psychomotor stimulant theory of addiction. Psychological Review 94: 469-492.

Young, P.T. (1959). The role of affective processes in learning and motivation. Psychological Review 66: 104-125.

Ladies, the doctor is in.

(Thanks to for the link.)

I was a founding member of WIT. (Though don't judge the current group by my improv skills now–I haven't done it in a long time.)

I highly recommend their classes for any of y'all in the Washington, D.C. area.
Here's the announcement:

Little Jimmy was born without a head.

This is a very rare affliction (commonly referred to as Little
Jimmy's Syndrome) that strikes only one individual every sixty or
seventy years, and Jimmy needs your help by June 24th.

For every friend or colleague you forward this message to who might
want to take an improv class from WIT, Bill Gates will donate one
dollar to the F.A.C.E. Fund (Find A Cure Eventually) in an effort to
find a cure for Jimmy. Congress will wave the 5 cent email tax on
these messages. IBM will give you a free computer. Disney will send
you a coupon for the Outback Steakhouse.

Yes, this is like a chain letter. But it's a chain letter with a
heart. And a head.

Washington Improv Theater starts in with its latest round improv
classes on Monday June 24th, and we want you to register. If you've
ever thought about taking our Level I class, this is the time to do
it. You don't have to be 'funny'. You don't have to be good at
performing in front of other people. You just have to be willing to
take a little bit of a risk. We want YOU to sign up, but we also want
you to think about how lucky you are to have a head, and forward this
message along to everyone you know who might enjoy taking a WIT class.

Do it for Jimmy.

Whether you're looking to polish your skills or just give it a try,
WIT's six-level Improv Training Program has something for everyone.
In addition to Level I, this time around we're offering Levels II,
III and V. All the information you need can be found on
http://www.dcwit.com . It's not too late to sign up, but you'd better
hurry- registration won't be open for long.

So take an improv class. You've got a head- you should use it. To
laugh. To smile. To play with others. Sign up now or forward this
message to someone who will.

Jimmy would like that.

REMEMBER- For every student you get to sign up, WIT will give you two
free tickets to any of our shows! Seriously!

“Interactive, unconventional . . . but not intimidating.”
“I enjoyed every minute of every class and had a great time.”
“I laughed my ass off!”
-Feedback from past students

http://www.dcwit.com

Class questions on it [email protected]

T H E R E V O L U T I O N W I L L B E I M P R O V I S E D

So this is why lefties get all most of the babes…:>

http://www.columbia.edu/~le93/qje_all.pdf

“Why have women become left-wing: the political gender gap and the decline in marriage” with Rohini Pande)
Accepted Quarterly Journal of Economics. Featured in Economic Intuition, fall 2001; and Business Week, March 11, 2002

Paper
Abstract: The last three decades have witnessed the rise of a political gender gap in the United States wherein more women than men favor the Democratic party. We trace this development to the decline in marriage, which we posit has made men richer and women poorer. Data for the United States support this argument. First, there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap — higher divorce prevalence reduces support for the Democrats among men but not women. Second, longitudinal data show that following marriage (divorce), women are less (more) likely to support the Democratic party.

Via Bryan Caplan of the Armchair Economist mailing list:

http://www.iew.unizh.ch/wp/iewwp117.pdf

Institute for Empirical Research in Economics
University of Zurich
Working Paper Series
ISSN 1424-0459
Working Paper No. 117
PUBLISHING AS PROSTITUTION?
Choosing Between One‘s Own Ideas and Academic Failure
Bruno S. Frey
June 2002
1
PUBLISHING AS PROSTITUTION?
Choosing Between
One’s Own Ideas
and
Academic Failure
by
Bruno S. Frey*
(University of Zurich)
(revised version of June 6, 2002)
* Bruno S. Frey is Professor of Economics, Institute for Empirical Economic Research, Bluemlisalpstr. 10, CH-
8006 Zurich, Switzerland. [email protected]. www.bsfrey.ch. Comments are most welcome.
I am grateful for helpful comments from Matthias Benz, Egon Franck, Robert Frank, René L. Frey, Daniel
Hamermesh, Reto Jegen, Simon Luechinger, Margit Osterloh, Stephan Meier and Hannelore Weck-Hannemann
2
Abstract
Survival in academia depends on publications in refereed journals. Authors only get their papers accepted if they intellectually prostitute themselves by slavishly following the demands made by anonymous referees without property rights on the journals they advise. Intellectual prostitution is neither beneficial to suppliers nor consumers. But it is avoidable. The editor (with property rights on the journal) should make the basic decision of whether a paper is worth publishing or not. The referees only give suggestions on how to improve thepaper. The author may disregard this advice. This reduces intellectual prostitution and produces more original publications.
JEL classification: A11, Z00
Keywords: academic market, publications, economics of economics, intellectual prostitution
3
I. Prostitution of Ideas and Academic Career
This paper will never be published in a (refereed) economics journal, nor will it be submitted
to a scholarly journal.