Conditioned Enhancement of Cough Response in Awake Guinea Pigs

Abstract

To determine whether psychological factors affect the cough response, we employed a classical conditioning procedure in which capsaicin challenge was paired with the presentation of an odor in awake guinea pigs. On days 1-4, animals received combined administrations of the unconditioning stimulus, capsaicin aerosols, and the contidioning stimulus, camphor aerosols (group 1), capasaicin and saline aerosols (group 2), and camphor and saline aerosols (group 3), and the number of coughs was counted. On day 5, all groups received camphor and saline aerosols. A significant number of coughs (p<0.01) was observed only in group 1 when the animals were exposed to the odor alone on day 5. This suggests that associative learning enhances the cough response.

Codeine and cough: an ineffective gold standard

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“…Could animals be trained to cough? Guinea pigs can be conditioned to cough to non-tussive stimuli [24], but although the cortex may be involved we don't know what they are thinking or if they have UtC.…”