Why is email addictive?

Did it ever happen to you to find yourself hitting the “get new mail” button over and over just as if it was something you cannot help but doing? Email addiction (also known as Emailoholism) seems to be a common experience for so many people working with computers and internet access. Some statistics say it might be of interest of at least 6% of internet users, meaning millions of people. Mindhacks features a wonderful, clear, article about it: here. The bottomline is that whenever we look compulsively for new email we actually obey to some reward-conditioning in our brain, as much as rats in a cage in a learning experiment.