Habituation Patterns Research Articles

Recent developments in the study of feeding and drinking in animals

I examined biased patterns of habituation that occur when reproductive male three-spined stickleback,Gasterosteus aculeatus , respond to a choice of two dummy females, one displaying the head-up posture of a sexually receptive female and an otherwise identical dummy lacking this sign stimulus (i.e. a dummy in a ‘neutral’ horizontal posture). Males initially courted both dummies about equally, but within 5 min, their courtship to the horizontal dummy began to habituate and was eventually replaced by attack behaviour, which increased about four-fold during the 1-h trial. Courtship to the head-up dummy continued unabated throughout the trial and by 5 min exceeded courtship to the horizontal dummy. Attack to the head-up dummy increased slightly in the first half of the trial then leveled off to about one-third that directed to the horizontal dummy. Both dummies were stationary and unreactive so could not directly provide differential feedback to the males. It is speculated that the self-arousal males obtain when responding to head-up posture reinforces their response to that cue. The salience of this sign stimulus may develop through an interactive process wherein the male's predisposition to recognize and court the head-up posture and the sexual self-arousal he obtains by doing so counter habituation and help maintain his sexual response to that cue. The stimulus–response specificity of male courtship is assumed to have an innate basis but requires experience to become fully differentiated. The results also illustrate that rate or extent of habituation to different stimuli, even on the same dimension, can differ within the same individual and in an adaptive manner.

Factors affecting spontaneous activity in rats with limbic system lesions

Abstract Spontaneous activity was studied in rats with lesions of the septal area, hippocampus and cingulate cortex under conditions of deprivation and sensory stimulation. Cingulate animals were similar to controls throughout the experiment. Hippocampal animals were generally more active than controls, but were relatively unaffected by deprivation and stimulation. Septal animals displayed initially high activity levels which dropped well below control levels after 5 days. The septal group responded to conditions of food and water deprivation and auditory stimulation with an increase in total activity. An analysis of within-session activity measures indicated superior habituation rates for septal animals under normal conditions. However, habituation patterns were severely disrupted when deprivation or stimulation was imposed. This disruption did not occur in any of the other groups. It was suggested that spontaneous activity is a function of behavioral inhibition and facilitation, both mediated through the septum. Removal of the septum results in an exaggeration at both ends of the activity scale.

Habituation and activity patterns of rats with large hippocampal lesions under various drive conditions.

Habituation and activity patterns of rats with large hippocampal lesions under various drive conditions.

Drug control of arousal and nystagmic habituation in the cat.

Nystagmic habituation was compared in 45 cats (15 per group) exposed to repeated angular acceleration following injection of d-amphetamine sulfate, Nembutal, or a placebo. Although large differences in total slow-phase nystagmic output were found between the groups, the habituation pattern across trials was essentially unaffected. The results indicate that nystagmic habituation in total darkness reflects more than a loss of arousal, and demonstrate the value of d-amphetamine sulfate as a useful experimental control in the study of nystagmic habituation.

Non-random oscillation in the response-duration curve of electrographic activation

The response-duration curve for the alpha-blocking response to a bright double flash of light was studied in 25 normal subjects. Each individual was subjected to 60 stimulus presentation on six separate occasions, five of them under various drugs and one under a placebo. Data for the placebo and for methamphetamine are presented. The curve of mean duration of alpha blocking (placebo) for 60 trials indicated a roughly exponential decrement between trials 1 and 29. From trial 30 on to 37 there was a steady increase in mean values, followed by a second decrease and then a second increase in the last five trials. The curves for individuals revealed more marked oscillation but slight differences in phasing and frequency resulted in a smoothed curve for the whole population. Nevertheless, 16 of the 25 subjects had a periodicity precisely concordant with that in the mean data. Amphetamine produced a striking increase in mean response duration with stimulus repetition. However, marked oscillations were observed in over one-third of the cases; the remainder showed changes in rate of increase which, on a mean plot, also suggested the presence of an oscillatory process. The data indicate that within the time and parametric limits of this experiment there is a non-random oscillatory process affecting alpha-blockade response duration which is superimposed upon the habituation curve. Recognition of this oscillation may be important in assessing the effect of drugs or other procedures on the pattern of habituation.