Conditioned behavior in a decorticate dog.

Abstract

A decorticate dog, which retained only a few shreds of cortex, manifested conditioned responses of a crude diffuse kind to a belt and a light used as conditioned stimuli. The unconditioned stimulus was a shock administered to the right forepaw. These diffuse conditioned responses involving changes in breathing, movements of the trunk and limbs, etc., appeared as early and as readily as in normal animals. Differential or adaptive conditioned responses (shock-avoidance) occurred only 4 times in 250 trials. Normal animals reach a mean score of 86 per cent correct responses within a similar training period.