Not the pleasure centre

[andrewducker]

Thanks to The Infamous Brad I read this article about attention centres in the brain.

Remember the experiment where they put a wire in the pleasure centre of a rat's brain and it would repeatedly press the on-button until it died of starvation?

Turns out that it wasn't the pleasure centre, but something more akin to curiosity, anticipation or foraging. It's the same bit of the brain that goes "Ooh, an interesting link, I shall click on it.", or "If I slay one more Orc then maybe I'll find something cool", or "I shall hit refresh one more time on LJ to see if anyone has posted in the last 3.5 seconds."

So if you've ever wondered where an hour went while you link-hopped on wikipedia, or why you haven't seen your partner in the week since they bought the latest World of Warcraft expansion, now you know :->

Comments

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Actually, most Warcraft players I know have at least a basic planned upgrade route for their gear once they the experience level cap. There isn't much 'curiosity', 'anticipation' or blind 'foraging' left once you hit the top level. Most folk are grinding very specific raids/rep/pvp for very specific items.

[andrewducker]

Later on, other things take hold certainly. But that's after you hit the level cap, by which time you're very invested.