Centrally elicited aggressive behavior: A model system for the study of episodic neurobehavioral pathologies?

Abstract

Studies in which the predatory‐like attack of a cat upon a rat has been elicited by electrical brain stimulation have been briefly reviewed with an emphasis on the question of where within the central nervous system such brain stimulation is producing its behaviorally meaningful effects. Two opposing but by no means mutually exclusive views are considered. The first is that brain stimulation elicits this behavior pattern primarily because it affects a specific motivated behavior system that is organized discretely in the midbrain and pons. The second is that forebrain neural activity is modulated in behaviorally significant ways by brainstem stimulation, which elicits predatory‐like aggressive behavior in the cat. The possibility that further research on the altered state of central nervous system activity, induced by brain stimulation which elicits aggressive behavior in the cat, may lead to a further understanding of the altered states of central nervous system activity that underlie the aggressive dyscontrol syndrome and other episodic state disorders is discussed.

Visual aspects of centrally elicited attack behavior in the cat: “Patterned reflexes” associated with selection of and approach to a rat

“…Vanegas et a1 [ 19691 have also reported that both the spontaneous activity of single cells in the visual cortex as well as the responses of these cells to various visual stimuli were modified by lateral hypothalamic stimulation. The possibility that forebrain neural mechanisms are modulated in behaviorally significant ways by the hypothalamic and midbrain stimulation which elicits biting-attack behavior has been previously suggested [Bandler, 1979b;Halliday and Bandler, 1981 ;Siege1 and Edinger, in press]. The results of this study reinforce those suggestions.…”