James Olds was an American psychologist who co-discovered the reward center of the brain with Peter Milner while he was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University in 1954. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern neuroscience and received numerous distinctions ranging from election to the United States National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 to the Newcomb Cleveland Prize

Newcomb Cleveland Prize

The Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science is annually awarded to author of outstanding scientific paper published in the Research Articles or Reports sections of Science...

 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

American Association for the Advancement of Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...

.

Early life and education

Olds was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father Leland Olds

Leland Olds

Leland Olds was an American economist. Olds was interested in labor, development of public electric power, and ecology....

 later became Chairman of the Federal Power Commission

Federal Power Commission

The Federal Power Commission was an independent commission of the United States government, originally organized on June 23, 1930, with five members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate...

 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

. His grandfather George D. Olds was the ninth President of Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

. Olds grew up in Nyack, New York

Nyack, New York

Nyack is a village in the towns of Orangetown and Clarkstown in Rockland County, New York, United States, located north of South Nyack; east of Central Nyack; south of Upper Nyack and west of the Hudson River, approximately 19 miles north of the Manhattan boundary, it is an inner suburb of New...

. Olds attended college at a number of schools including St. John's College

St. John's College, U.S.

St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher...

, Annapolis

Annapolis, Maryland

Annapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Maryland, as well as the county seat of Anne Arundel County. It had a population of 38,394 at the 2010 census and is situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east of Washington, D.C. Annapolis is...

, and the University of Wisconsin, but received his undergraduate B.A. from Amherst College in 1947. His undergraduate years were interrupted by military service in the U.S. Army during the Second World War as part of the Persian Gulf Command

Persian Gulf Command

The Persian Gulf Command was a United States Army service command established in December 1943 to assure the supply of U.S. lend-lease war material to the Soviet Union. Its history originated in September 1941, when the U.S. Military Iranian Mission led by Engineer officer COL Raymond A. Wheeler ...

. Following the war, Olds went on to get his Ph.D. at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in the Department of Social Relations under Professor Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927 to 1973....

. His thesis was focused on motivation and led to his subsequent interest in the biological basis of motivation. Olds married fellow neuroscientist, Marianne E. Olds in 1946. They had two children, Jacqueline Olds and James Leland Olds.

Scientific career

Following his Ph.D., Olds went on to do postdoctoral work at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 under Donald Olding Hebb

Donald Olding Hebb

Donald Olding Hebb FRS was a Canadian psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning...

, where he made his most important discovery with Peter Milner. Subsequently Olds moved to UCLA, where he took his first academic appointment at the Brain Research Institute. In 1957 Olds was appointed associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. He left Michigan in 1969 to become the Bing Professor of Behavioral Biology at the California Institute of Technology

California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

where he continued his research and led a large lab until his untimely death in a swimming accident in August 1976. His last work was aimed at understanding the mechanisms of learning and memory.

Selected bibliography

• 1954 Olds, J., and P. Milner. Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. J. Comp. Physiol. Psychol. 47:419-27.

• 1955 Olds, J. "Reward" from brain stimulation in the rat. Science 122:878.

• 1956 Olds, J. Runway and maze behavior controlled by basomedial forebrain stimulation in the rat. J. Comp. Physiol. Psychol. 49:507-12.

• 1956 Olds, J., K. F. Killiam, and P. Bach-Y-Rita. Self-stimulation of the brain used as a screening method for tranquilizing drugs. Science 124:265-66.

• 1956 Olds, J. Pleasure center in the brain. Sci. Am. 195: 105-16.

• 1958 Olds, J. Self-stimulation of the brain. Science 127:315-24.

• 1958 Olds, J., and M. E. Olds. Positive reinforcement produced by stimulating hypothalamus with iproniazid and other compounds. Science 127:1175-76.

• 1965 Operant conditioning of single unit responses. Proc. 23rd Congr. Physiological Sciences. Excerpta Med. Int. Congr. Ser. no. 87,, pp. 372–80.

• 1967 The limbic system and behavioural reinforcement. Prog. Brain Res. 27 144-64.
• The central nervous system and the reinforcement of behaviour. Am. Psychol. 24 (1969) 114-32.

• 1969 Olds, J., and Hirano, T.: Conditioned responses of hippocampal and other neurons. Electroencephalogr. clin. Neurophysiol. 26 159-66.

• 1969 Olds, J., and Best, P. J.: Single unit patterns during anticipatory behaviour. Electroencephalogr. clin. Neurophysiol. 26 144-58.

• 1972 Olds, J., Disterhoft, J. F., Segal, M., Kornblith, C. L., and Hirsh, R.: Learning centres of rat brain mapped by measuring latencies of conditioned unit responses. J. Neurophysiol. 35 202-19.

• Drives and reinforcements Raven Books ISBN- 0-89004-087-7 (1977)