Generalized conditioned responses under curare and erythroidine.

Abstract

maintained by aid of the Research Council, American Otological Society. This research was initiated during the Spring, 1940, with the assistance of Mr. Robert Mandell at Brooklyn College and completed during the writer's tenure as a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1941-42. Special aid from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society and the Elizabeth Thompson Science Fund is gratefully acknowledged. The erythroidine was generously supplied by Merck & Company, Rahway, New Jersey. 1 In order to conserve space, the following short-hand expressions have been used: B = bell. CS = conditional stimulus (B, L, L + B, T). CR *= conditioned response. Diff. =» diffuse, generalized activity of the body, tail, head, neck, etc. The exact form varies, depending upon the depth of the drug-state. DMR •= direct muscle response, appearing in the very deep drugstate, in which the block at the myoneural junction is complete. The muscle will, however, still contract to the direct action of the shock upon the muscle fibers (c/. footnote 7 below). L = light. L + B = L presented for 4 sees., overlapped with B for the last 2 sees. P = pupil of the eye. ST >= semitendinosus muscle. T •= pure tone, 1024 cycles, 90 db., generated by Western Electric audiometer. UR = unconditioned response. US = unconditioned stimulus, 6hock. CR training scores are represented in fractions; the numerators denote the number of CR and the denominators give the total number of trials. 1 During tests in the drug-state, there was only a partial block to nerve impulses at the junction between motor nerve and muscle. Thus the isolated muscle was still capable of some degree of contraction, although the quality of the response was apparently different. The rest of the musculature remained completely inert during these tests. With larger doses, of course, even this action could be suppressed. 105 ' * In this connection, the caution previously cited (ix, p. 264) must be rigorously followed: fatality of the animal may easily 'follow premature withdrawal of the catheter upon the return of voluntary breathing. Due to flaccidity of throat musculature and excessive secretion of saliva at this stage of the recovery process, death will occur from suffocation. Maintaining

The role of cognition in classical and operant conditioning

“…For example, a rat prevented from turning right can traverse the right path of a T maze by turning left in a 3 4 _ circle, until it is facing the goal box. Numerous studies have shown that learning occurred when responses were prevented in a variety of ways, including a) immobilizing rats by an administration of curare and testing learning when the drug was no longer active (Girden, 1942), b) crushing rats' motor nerves (Kellogg, Scott, Davis, & Wolf, 1940), and c) lesioning midbrain regions (Beck & Doty, 1957).…”

Curare drugs and total paralysis.

“…271-272]. Girden (1942) later worked extensively with conditioned responses in the striate musculature of dogs more or less deeply under the effects of either curare or erythroidine (one of the first of the synthetic curares). In fairness, it must be said that, although Girden reported successful conditioning even in thoroughly drugged animals, he did remark that, "When the animal is in the very deep state, no overt response other than the direct contraction of muscle to shock .…”

The dissociation of blood pressure conditioned responses under erythroidine.

“…4. The absence of CR on Z.-7 and i-8 was due to a temporary' depression which followed the supplementary drug-injection at 1:00 P.M. 6 After a short pause, the CR reappeared on CR-13 before shock was applied. * Such waves apparently result from a number of internal conditions affecting the sympathetic nervous system.…”

“…The experimental procedure has been described in its essentials elsewhere (6) and only slight modifications were introduced to include the recording of BP. Under ether anesthesia, the common carotid artery was located adjacent to the trachea before its division into the external and internal branches.…”

“…The dissociative effect produced by curare has been recently duplicated with erythroidine. More important, it has been demonstrated that the CR to light or bell in the mild-drug-state consisted o' f generalized 'emotional' activity of the entire organism (6).…”