Septal lesions enhance shock avoidance behavior in the rat

Shock-induced fighting in septal-lesioned rats

“…Hence, fighting. like the changes in avoidance learning (Krieckhaus, Simmons, Thomas, & Kenyon, 1964) in septal lesioned animals does not appear to correlate with the hyperemotionality as measured by the rating scales. studies by Lints (1965) strated the dependence of shock-induced fighting upon shock levels.…”

Comments on Kirkby and Polgar’s interpretation of caudate nucleus function

“…, passive avoidance conditioning, this impairment seems related to the effects of the lesion interacting with specific task conditions (Winocur & Mills, 1969) rather than a lesion-induced bias towards response disinhibition. Furthermore, rats rendered hyperreactive by brain lesions, as is the case following damage to the septal region, typically show enhanced two-way AC (Krieckhaus, Simmons, Thomas, & Kenyon, 1964;Schwartzbaum , Green, Beatty, & Thomson, 1967). As already established, caudate lesions severely impair this type of learning.…”

Analysis of the response-inhibition concept of septal functions in “passive-avoidance” behavior

“…The evidence that such regulation might extend to the expression of complexly organized instrumental behavior is based upon the contrastingpatternofeffects produced by septal lesions in what Mowrer (1960) characterizes as "passive" and "active" shock-avoidance behavior. While septal Ss have difficulty in inhibiting some established consummatory response to avoid punishment (passive avoidance), they tend to show more rapid development of avoidance responses in the conventional shuttlebox situation (King, 1958;Krieckhaus et al, 1964). These findings led McCleary and Kaada et al to rule out possible disturbances in "emotionality" or learning.…”

“…It also seemed of interest to examine the role of intensity of shock used as punishment. Although one might expect on the basis of the responseinhibition concept an inverse relationship between impairment in response suppression and intensity of shock, the possibility of disturbances in somatic reactivity to shock itself (Kaada et al, 1962;Krieckhaus et al, 1964) …”