The parasympathetic component of unlearned and acquired cardiac responses.

Abstract

Psychological literature often conveys the impression that of the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic system plays the only important role in the mobilization of bodily resources to meet a stress or emergency situation. This stems from Cannon's classical work (Bazett, 1956), which vividly portrays the difficulty a sympathectomized animal has in adjusting to disturbing stimuli and which simultaneously emphasizes the restorative and protective functions of the parasympathetic system. That the parasympathetic system plays a very important role in cardiac acceleration in dogs was first shown by Gasser and Meek (1914), who found that inhibition of the vagus nerves accounts for most of the heart rate (HR) acceleration occurring in exercise. The question arises of whether the vagus nerves play a similar role in the cardiac component of the orienting reflex (OR) and the CR. The present paper provides information concerning this question; we report the effects of atropine sulphate on the auditory OR and the defense CR. METHOD SubjectsSix mongrel dogs, one to t\vo 3'ears old, four males and two females, were trained to stand quietly in a conditioning stand. The stand was located in a soundshielded room isolating the 5s from the experimenters, recording equipment, and adventitious stimuli. ProcedureOR training. Five of the six 5s were given several daily sessions consisting usually of 10 to 15 repetitions

Intertrial interval and unconditioned stimulus durations in autoshaping

“…In appetitive salivary conditioning, the quantity of food US has been shown to be directly related to the vigor of the CR (Gantt, 1938;Wagner et al, 1964). This finding holds as well for a variety of other preparations, including acid-induced salivary conditioning (Feather, Delse, & Bryson, 1967;Warstler & Ost, 1965), GSR conditioning (Boring & Morrow, 1968), human eyeblink conditioning (Prokasy & Harsanyi, 1968;Spence, 1953;Spence, Haggard, & Ross, 1958;Spence & Platt, 1966), conditioned emotional response procedures (Annau & Kamin, 1961;Ghiselli & Fowler, 1976), finger withdrawal (Elias, 1965), heart-rate conditioning (Dykman & Gantt, 1959;Sideroff, Schneiderman, & Powell, 1971), and conditioning of the nictitating membrane in rabbits (Ashton et al, 1969;Smith, 1968).…”

Heart Rate Conditioning in the Cat and Its Relationship to Other Physiological Responses

“…It would seem that a central mechanism of subcortical location is the basis of the deceleration. Interestingly, the cardiac acceleration seen in dogs has also been demonstrated to be of vagal origin (Dykman & Gantt, 1959). In this instance, the mechanism is one of vagal inhibition.…”

Effects of extinction on classical conditioning and conditioning-specific reflex modification of rabbit heart rate

“…The neural mechanisms underlying HR conditioning have been widely researched in rabbits and other species including humans, with studies concentrating on vagal-mediated, parasympathetic cardiovascular changes [12,18,19,29,30,42,46,62], sympathetic-mediated changes [1,31], emotional/affective learning components involving the amygdala and prefrontal cortex [10,47,50,52,58], contributions of the cerebellar vermis [5,74], and involvement of the hippocampus in encoding the memory trace [39,40]. The CNS contributions to HR conditioning have also been assessed by detailed analysis of the electrocardiogram, including measurement of the intervals between the P and Q or Q and T deflections [42,43].…”