Comments on Instinctive Behavior, Neural Systems and Reinforcement Mechanisms

Abstract

This brief comment on psychic dependence is speculative and will be centered around four questions:

• 1. Can the concept of instinctive behavior or, for that matter, the concept of drives, promote our understanding of addictive behavior in animals and man?

• 2. If such concepts are useful in this regard, we may ask whether the cerebral structures that are thought to mediate instinctive behavior are also involved in the formation and maintenance of addictive behavior.

• 3. The third question is concerned with reinforcement and learning. How is the concept of reinforcement linked with the concept of drives, and

• 4. how do the cerebral structures which are involved in reinforcement mechanisms relate to the structures which mediate instinctive behavior.