The Acagamic

In this place used to be a blog post I wrote because copy­righted images from my PhD research had been mis­rep­re­sented in a webi­nar from a lady in the US and I wanted to clar­ify the real story behind my pic­tures and my research. This was done suc­cess­fully. The lady has removed these pic­tures from her webi­nar now and therefore—as long as this does not hap­pen again—no fur­ther need for clar­i­fi­ca­tion exists from my side and I have removed the orig­i­nal post and its com­ments as a cour­tesy. I would rather spend my future time on more valu­able things. I would also like to thank all the peo­ple that have sup­ported me with legal and moral advice dur­ing this pub­lic debate. I have also closed the com­ments sec­tion and hope this ends the pub­lic debate on this blog. I am mov­ing on to more impor­tant things.

Dr. Lennart Nacke
Department of Computer Science
University of Saskatchewan

A neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­stand­ing of games has at its core the dopamin­er­gic reward sys­tem [cite]10.1145/1920778.1920780[/cite]. The the nucleus accum­bens, which is also dubbed the plea­sure cen­ter of the brain, is cur­rently under­stood as the crit­i­cal brain region asso­ci­ated with the neu­ro­trans­mit­ter dopamine, which in turn is impli­cated in habit for­ma­tion, reward-seeking behav­iors and addic­tion. The above video shows a speech from Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University, where he dis­cusses his research con­cern­ing dopamine release in the brain when rewarded and when antic­i­pat­ing a reward. Read the rest of this entry »