171,543 research outputs found

    Classical Eyelid Conditioning and Personality Factors

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    Attention-like processes in classical conditioning

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    Conditioned emotional response studies using rats already trained to press bar for food suppl

    Olfactory Conditioning of Positive Performance in Humans

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    Olfactory conditioning effects have been widely demonstrated in the animal literature but more seldom in human populations and rarely of consciously controlled human behaviors. Building upon previous work on negative performance, we report the first experimental evidence that odors can be used effectively in a classical conditioning paradigm to positively influence human behavior. In the present study, underachieving schoolchildren experienced unexpected success at a paper-and-pencil task in the presence of an ambient odor. When they later experienced the same odor again, performance on other tasks was superior to that of relevant control groups. These data substantially extend previous results on human olfactory classical conditioning and show that odors potentially can be used to exert positive influences on human behavior

    Classical conditioning as a distinct mechanism of placebo effects

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    Classical conditioning was suggested as a mechanism of placebo effects in the 1950s. It was then challenged by response expectancy theory, which proposed that classical conditioning is just one of the means by which expectancies are acquired and changed. According to that account, placebo effects induced by classical conditioning are mediated by expectancies. However, in most of the previous studies, either expectancies were not measured or classical conditioning was combined with verbal suggestions. Thus, on the basis of those studies, it is not possible to conclude whether expectancies are involved in placebo effects induced by pure classical conditioning. Two lines of recent studies have challenged the idea that placebo effects induced by classical conditioning are always mediated by expectancies. First, some recent studies have shown that a hidden conditioning procedure elicits both placebo analgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia, neither of which is predicted by expectancy. Second, there are studies showing that visual cues paired with pain stimuli of high or low intensity induce both placebo analgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia when they are presented subliminally without participants’ awareness. The results of both lines of studies suggest that expectancy may not always be involved in placebo effects induced by classical conditioning and that conditioning may be a distinct mechanism of placebo effects. Thus, these results support the idea that placebo effects can be learned by classical conditioning either consciously or unconsciously. However, the existing body of evidence is limited to classically conditioned placebo effects in pain, that is, placebo analgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia

    A homolog of the vertebrate pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide is both necessary and instructive for the rapid formation of associative memory in an invertebrate

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    Similar to other invertebrate and vertebrate animals, cAMP dependent signaling cascades are key components of long-term memory (LTM) formation in the snail Lymnaea stagnalis, an established experimental model for studying evolutionarily conserved molecular mechanisms of long-term associative memory. Although a great deal is already known about the signaling cascades activated by cAMP, the molecules involved in the learning-induced activation of adenylate cyclase (AC) in Lymnaea remained unknown. Using Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectroscopy in combination with biochemical and immunohistochemical methods, recently we have obtained evidence for the existence of a Lymnaea homologue of the vertebrate pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide (PACAP) and for the AC activating effect of PACAP in the Lymnaea nervous system. Here we first tested the hypothesis that PACAP plays an important role in the formation of robust LTM after single-trial classical food-reward conditioning. Application of the PACAP receptor antagonist PACAP6-38 around the time of single-trial training with amyl acetate and sucrose blocked associative LTM, suggesting that in this strong food-reward conditioning paradigm the activation of AC by PACAP was necessary for LTM to form. We found that in a weak multi-trial food-reward conditioning paradigm, lip-touch paired with sucrose, memory formation was also dependent on PACAP. Significantly, systemic application of PACAP at the beginning of multi-trial tactile conditioning accelerated the formation of transcription dependent memory.Our findings provide the first evidence to show that in the same nervous system PACAP is both necessary and instructive for fast and robust memory formation after reward classical conditioning

    Classical conditioning and implicit cognition

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    Experimental data, behavioral and psychobiological, reviewed in this paper show that human classical conditioning has an evolutionary purpose, it is developed by means of a cognitive processing different from the conscious processing, and sustained by different cerebral structures. These structures usually do not work isolated. For that reason, combination of both forms of processing, explicit/implicit, is the general pattern in natural conditions. In fact, due to the hierarchical organization of the nervous system, usually it exists a top-down control process (cortical-subcortical) but, under special conditions of laboratory, can be behaviorally evident, for example by means of the fear conditioning, close relationship between implicit processing and Pavlovian conditioning in humans.En su conjunto, las evidencias experimentales conductuales y psicobiológicas revisadas en este artículo muestran que el condicionamiento clásico humano tiene una justificación evolutiva, se desarrolla mediante un procesamiento cognitivo diferente del procesamiento consciente y se sustenta en estructuras cerebrales diferentes. Dichas estructuras no suelen funcionar desligadas y por ello la combinación de ambas formas de procesamiento, explícito e implícito, es el patrón general en condiciones naturales. De hecho, debido a la organización jerárquica del sistema nervioso, suele existir un proceso de control de arriba hacia abajo (cortical-subcortical) pero, bajo condiciones especiales de laboratorio, puede hacerse evidente en la conducta, por ejemplo, mediante los paradigmas de miedo condicionado, la estrecha relación entre procesamiento implícito y el condicionamiento clásico en nuestra especie

    Why the cognitive approach in psychology would profit from a functional approach and vice versa

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    Cognitively oriented psychologists often define behavioral effects in terms of mental constructs (e.g., classical conditioning as a change in behavior that is due to the formation of associations in memory) and thus effectively treat those effects as proxies for mental constructs. This practice can, however, hamper scientific progress. I argue that if psychologists would consistently define behavioral effects only in terms of the causal impact of elements in the environment (e.g., classical conditioning as a change in behavior that is due to the pairing of stimuli), they would adopt a functional approach that not only reveals the environmental causes of behavior but also optimizes cognitive research. The cognitive approach in turn strengthens the functional approach by facilitating the discovery of new causal relations between the environment and behavior. I thus propose a functional-cognitive framework for research in psychology that capitalizes on the mutually supportive nature of the functional and cognitive approaches in psychology
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