抄録
A blindfolded chicken is placed on a perch without any restriction and is see-sawed 200 times in 800 seconds daily for four weeks.At first the chicken is unable to adapt itself to this motion, i.e.the head, trunk, wings and tail move violently with each cycle of see-saw and finally it falls off the perch to the floor.However, with the daily repetition of this see-saw motion the chicken becomes capable of adapting itself smoothly to the unstable postures of the head, trunk, wings and tail are countermanded by new stable postures which are just the mirror image of the postures at the beginning.Fukuda et al could demonstrate that these new postures resulted from establishment of a labyrinthine reflex of a higher order, which enables the chicken to adapt to the dynamic motion, therefore Fukuda named this process"Training" and this result"Training effect
In Fukuda's investigation, a blindfolded chicken was placed on a perch without restriction in any way.Therefore, not only the vestibular labyrinths but also the proprioceptive organs should have been stimulated by the see-saw motion.In order to know how the proprioceptive organs participate in the establishment of the training effect (a labyrinthine reflex of higher order), the head, neck, trunk, wings and tail were restrained separetly or combinedly in the following various ways and the chicken was see-sawed 200 times in 800 seconds daily for four weeks.The groups of chickens which were subjected to various types of restraint during the training are arranged below in the order of the facility with which the training was completed.
1.Blindfolded chickens which were placed on a perch without restriction in any way.
2.Blindfolded chickens of which the trunk and wings fixed with a plaster cast and which were placed on a perch made in a box.
3.Blindfolded chickens of which the trunk and wings were fixed with a plaster cast and which were placed in a box without any perch.
4.Blindfolded chickens of which the head, trunk and wings were fixed with a plaster cast and which were placed in a box without any perch.
The results show that the training effect is gained by virtue of combined functioning of the vestibular labyrinths and the proprioceptive organs distributing in the whole body.Therefore the author believes that the training for the air and space flight should be performed in this way;i.e. not only the vestibular labyrinths but the proprioceptive organs of the whole body should be simultaneously trained.
Even a trained chicken cannot maintain a good equilibrating posture during see-sawing and falls to the floor, after lapse of a month's untrained interval.However it soon recovers to its good equilibrating function through repetition of the see-saw motion for a few days.This result proves correctness of the proverb clearly and scientifically. "He harks back to his use"
