Employing labor-supply theory to measure the reward value of electrical brain stimulation

A model drawn from labor-supply theory is shown to provide a good account of time-allocation decisions taken by rats working for rewarding brain stimulation. The model makes it possible to infer, from behavioral data, the growth of the rewarding effect as a function of stimulation strength. Measurement of this function provides information about the stage of the reward circuitry where drugs or lesions alter the rewarding effect. The labor-supply model is used to illustrate how approaches drawn from economics, psychology, and neuroscience can inform each other. The model is linked to a set of psychological processes, including those responsible for transformation of the transient neural signal produced by the rewarding stimulation into an enduring record of payoff, estimation of a mean effort price, delay discounting, and estimation of the substitutability of work and leisure goods. All of these processes seem germane to economic behavior.