Fixation of spinal reflex alterations in spinal rats by sensory nerve stimulation.

Abstract

Two preparations in which sensory nerve stimulation was used to obtain peripherally induced spinal fixation in spinal rats are described. In the first preparation, proportionally greater amounts of persisting poststimulation flexor muscle contraction, as measured by a force displacement transducer, were produced as stimulation time was increased from 10 min to 40 min. In the second preparation, sensory nerve stimulation was delivered, and evoked whole-nerve responses were recorded from a flexor motor nerve. Results indicated that 30 min or more of sensory nerve stimulation produced increases in response amplitude and area that persisted for at least 30 min after stimulation.

Classical conditioning in rabbits using pontine nucleus stimulation as a conditioned stimulus and inferior olive stimulation as an unconditioned stimulus

“…A number of simple or reduced preparations have been developed to study neural correlates of learning and memory in both invertebrate species (e.g., Byrne, 1987;Carew et al, 1984;Davis, 1986;Farley and Alkon, 1982;Gelperin and Culligan, 1984;Hoyle, 1980) and vertebrate species (e.g., Cohen, 1984;Gabriel et al, 1982;Patterson et al, 1982;Steinmetz and Patterson, 1985;Teyler, 1986;. Indeed, use of one of these preparations, classical conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membraneleyelid response, has produced a large amount of behavioral and neural data that have implicated the involvement of a number of brain structures in simple motor learning.…”