Effects of activity and immobility conditioning upon subsequent heart-rate conditioning in curarized rats

An essay on the circulation as behavior

Most conceptual models of the organization of the cardiovascular system begin with the premise that the nervous system regulates the metabolic and nonmetabolic reflex adjustments of the circulation. These models assume that all the neurally mediated responses of the circulation are reactive, i.e., reflexes elicited by adequate stimuli. This target article suggests that the responses of the circulation are conditional in three senses. First, as Sherrington argued, reflexes are conditional in that they never operate in a vacuum but in a context together with other reflexes. Guided by functional utility, they interact rather than add. Second, as Pavlov argued, stimuli acquire meanings as a result of experience. This notion of stimulus effect plus the Sherringtonian notion of conditionality suggest that association is one of the ways stimuli eliciting cardiovascular reflexes acquire their meanings and thus their relative strengths. Finally, as Skinner and others have argued, operants are responses that act upon the environment to obtain consequences – that is, stimuli. As operants, cardiovascular responses fulfill a major biological need, functioning proactively. The cardiovascular response is an integral component of the animal's behavior regardless of whether it is an elicited reflex or the eliciting stimulus acquired its properties as a result of the genetic inheritance of the animal or through experience, or the cardiovascular response is emitted in anticipation of an environmental consequence. The main theses of this essay are: (1) behavior is an integrated set of responses and the circulation is one of the response systems comprising behavior; (2) behavior is, in part, determined by its functional significance within a context; (3) the contextual factors operative at the time of the behavior have a major role in determining which of the set of possible responses will determine the final act, that is, which behavior will be the effective response and which other behaviors will be concomitants.

Dynamics of reactions of nonspecific and somatic activation during biofeedback training

In experimental research involving the participation of 17 volunteers, we investigated the dynamics associated with indices of respiration, electromyographic activity of the hand muscles, heart rate, and electroencephalograms during training of voluntary upward and downward regulation of skin resistance and skin temperature. It was demonstrated that development of reactions of nonspecific, generalized activation appearing in the form of respiratory arrhythmia and, in a number of cases, in the form of changes in the frequency of respiration, heart rate, and an intensification of beta-activity were characteristic of the initial stages of the training. In a number of the subjects, we also noted activation of muscle groups in the areas where the sensing elements monitoring the vegetative parameters were attached. The activational reactions extinguished during reinforcement of the skill. The data obtained confirms the hypothesis that the training of adaptive biocontrol is a form of instrumental conditioning.

The behavioral management of asthma and asthma-related problems in children: a critical review of the literature

This review focuses upon the behavioral approach to childhood asthma. Asthma is defined as intermittent, variable, and reversible airways obstruction with a complex multidimensional etiology. The major measures of asthma include physiological, symptomatic, and collateral measures. The behavioral management of childhood asthma has been restricted to relaxation training, systematic desensitization, assertive training, biofeedback, and deconditioning of exercise-induced asthma. The efficacy of such intervention strategies for asthmatic children is in doubt, although the management of asthma-related problems in children appears to be a more promising area of research. The author suggests that the power of intervention programs for asthmatic children may be strengthened by the development of multifaceted treatment programs contingent upon the antecedents and consequences of the individual case. Also, behavior therapy may be of assistance to mild asthmatic children.

Instrumental cardiovascular conditioning: a review

This paper reviews experiments, hypotheses, and current controversies about instrumental cardiovascular conditioning. Demonstrations of such conditioning in curarized animals challenged a differentiation between instrumental and classical learning on the basis of their respective effector systems but did not prove direct operant learning by the autonomic nervous system. In humans, ethical prohibition of curarization and lack of adequate controls for respiration and muscle tension have resulted in incomplete understanding of the roles of voluntary, somatic mediators. Despite a variety of potential clinical applications of biofeedback, the available literature lacks studies of its efficacy compared to more standard modes of therapy. The physiological mechanisms and central neural pathways involved in instrumental cardiovascular conditioning remain almost totally unknown.

The effects of controlled muscle tension on performance and learning of heart-rate control

Thirty female subjects were divided in three groups and instructed in group I to increase their HRs with the aid of continuous feedback of performance, while they tensed their right forearm muscles 20% of maximal voluntary contraction. In the last session only feedback was used, Group II were trained with feedback only. Group III for the first two sessions tensed their muscles only, and in the last session trained HR increases with feedback only. Group I was superior in HR performance in the first two sessions. In the third session they deteriorated significantly and could not be distinguished from the other two groups. The results were interpreted in terms of relations between somatic and autonomic events and transfer between different states of somatic involvement during learning. Electrodermal activity and respiration were included as control variables.

Classical aversive conditioning of heart rate in curarized rats at different blood gas levels

In an effort to examine whether normal blood gas tensions were essential for conditioning, paralyzed rats received a classical aversive heart rate (HR) conditioning session while respirated at different peak expired CO2 values. After the session, arterial blood was drawn for analysis. That peak expired CO2 was effective in manipulating PCO2 was indicated by a significant correlation (r=0.594, df=17, P less than 0.05). In addition, only rats with blood gas values similar to those of anesthetized controls displayed a discriminated HR CR. These animals also had lower baseline HRs and greater HR variability. Further, 7 of the 9 rats with normal blood gas values were respirated at peak expired CO2 values from 5.0-5.1 per cent, and no animal ventilated within this range displayed abnormal values. These findings suggest that previous difficulties in obtaining calssical and operant conditioning in paralyzed animals may, in part, be attributable to inadequate ventilation.

Self-regulation of response patterning: implications for psychophysiological research and therapy

This paper develops the basic premise that learning to self-regulate a pattern of responses can have different consequences from those observed when controlling individual functions alone. It is suggested that the self-regulation of patterns of responses can be a particularly sensitive and effective procedure for (a) uncovering biological linkages and constraints between responses in the intact human, (b) investigating how multiphysiological systems combine to produce unique subjective experiences and effects on performance, and (c) enhancing the clinical effectiveness of biofeedback procedures by training patients to integrate and coordinate voluntarily specific patterns of cognitive, autonomic, and motor responses. These hypotheses are illustrated by basic research involving biofeedback training for patterns of blood pressure, heart rate and EEG activity, related experiments on the cognitive self-regulation of patterns of physiological responses using affective imagery and meditation procedures, and case studies of patients treated with biofeedback. The concept of electronic biofeedback as an "unnatural act" is presented with the goal of placing self-regulation within a more biobehavioral perspective emphasizing the natural patterning of physiological processes.

Visceral responses to opposite types of autogenic-training imagery

The purpose of this experiment was to test whether suggestions of imagery of the type used in autogenic training have specific effects on autonomic responses. In order to control for the effort involved in imagery and to determine the specificity of the effect, opposite types of imagery were used: (a) hands warm and heavy, and (b) hands cool and light. Nine subjects were trained for six daily sessions. Within each day 16 stimulus presentations were made, equally balanced between the two types of imagery. Heart rate, respiration rate, and EEG in the alpha frequency were recorded throughout all sessions. The 'cool' instruction reliably increased heart rate and respiration above pre-stimulus baselines; the 'warm' instruction resulted in statistically insignificant changes in the opposite direction. Large, consistent individual differences in autonomic response were found.