SECTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM*

Abstract

601Investigations of the various physiological and psychological conditions upon which the organization of emotional behavior depend have long occupied the attention of biological scientists concerned with the broad problem of brain-behavior relationships. The pioneering efforts of men like Geltz! and Sherrington 2 more than half a century ago effectively set the stage for the important contributions of Cannen,3 Dusser de Barennef and, more recently, Bards and Kluver,6 elucidating the role of forebrain structures in emotional expression. As a consequence of such experimental analysis, combined with clinical observations of affective changes following nervous-system damage," attention has focused upon the "limbic system,,8,9 as a critical participant in the elaboration of emotional behavior patterns.But the selective assessment and definition of specific neural-behavioral relationships in this area have continued to present numerous methodological and theoretical problems. Recent developments in animalconditioning techniques and refinements in both neurophysiological and neuroanatomical methods appear to offer new and exciting possibilities for the experimental analysis of emotional behavior and its neural correlates, however, and the present report approaches the problem within such an interdisciplinary framework. More specifically, these investigations have proceeded from an attempt to explore the relationships between independently and operationally definable conditioned emotional-response patterns in laboratory animals and the participant events of nervoussystem structure and function.

Some Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Electrical Self‐stimulation of the Limbic System

“…Available evidence Brady, 1956;Brady, 1958a;Brady, 1958b;Delgado et al, 1954;Miller, 1958;Olds, 1958a;Olds, 1958b;Olds, 1955;Olds, 1956a;Olds, 1956b;Olds, 1958c;Olds et al, 1956;Olds et al, 1954;Sidman et al, 1955), would seem to indicate that a wide range of conditions can affect the reinforcing properties of an intracranial electrical stimulus and that the locus of the stimulated area contributes prominently to the observed behavioral effects. The present study, however, suggests that a careful analysis of the electrophysiological events consequent upon brain stimulation may provide important additional leads to the necessary and sufficient conditions for the maintenance of such electrical self-stimulation behavior.…”

“…Following the original observations by Olds and Milner that localized brain stimulation could serve as a reward for lever pressing (Olds et al, 1954), several reports have described interaction effects involving electrical self-stimulation of selected brain areas and a wide variety of behavioral, physiological, and anatomical factors Brady, 1956;Brady, 1958a;Brady, 1958b;Brady, Boren, Conrad & Sidman, 1957;Lilly, 1958;Miller, 1958;Olds, 1958a;Olds, 1955;Olds, 1956a;Olds, 1956b;Olds, 1958b;Olds, Killan & Bach-y-Rita, 1956). However, surprisingly little attention has been directed toward an analysis of the interrelationships between the physiological events associated with self-stimulation and the behavior of the self-stimulating animal.…”

Some effects of limbic system self-stimulation upon conditioned emotional behavior.

“…Several recent reports have described interaction effects involving electrical self-stimulation of selected brain areas and a wide variety of physiological and psychological phenomena. Experimental demonstrations of positively reinforcing effects produced by inlracranial self-stimulation in the rat (Olds & Milner, 1954), cat (Brady, 1956), and monkey (Brady, 1958b) have now been extended to an analysis of relationships involving electrode location (Olds, 1956), stimulus intensity (Reynolds, 1958), schedules of reinforcement (Sidman, Brady, Boren, Conrad, & Schulman, 1955), food and water deprivation (Brady, Boren, Conrad, & Sidman, 1957), sex hormones (Olds, 1958a), drugs (Olds, Killam, & Bach-y-Rita, 1956), and satiation effects (Olds, 1958b). Significantly, however, emotional or affective changes related to positively rewarding brain stimulation have received little direct experimental attention.…”

Some Effects of Brain Stimulation on Timing Behavior

“…Recent reports of the rewarding properties of electrical brain stimulation (Olds & Milner, 1954;Brady, 1956;Brady, 1958) suggest an interesting approach to the exploration of central-nervous-system participation in such timing behavior. It has been demonstrated that stable lever pressing on several different schedules of reinforcement can be maintained in laboratory animals for an intracranial electrical stimulus in selected areas of the brain without any other reward (Sidman, Brady, Boren, Conrad, & Schulman, 1955).…”