Electroencephalograms of Man in the Generalization and Differentiation of Conditioned Reflexes

抄録

1. In order to establish conditioned responses of brain-waves, a weak acoustic stimulus M which was almost ineffective for evoking any excitation-potential (e. p.) was applied many times with an interval of about 3-5 minutes associated with a light which was delivered 2 seconds after the beginning of the stimulus M. So obtained e. p. was characterized by complicated patterns and long duration and very similar to the e. p. caused by mental work.
2. Though the light-stimulus used as the unconditioned stimulus was in general little effective for evoking galvanic skin-responses (g. s. r.), a remarkable g. s. r. accompanied the e.p. caused by the conditioned stimulus. This fact indicates that the conditioned e.p. was no more confined to the receptor mechanism in the cortex, but involved the effector mechanism.
3. When another sort of acoustic stimulus K was applied in the completely conditioned state of the subject, the. generalization of the conditioned reflex took place in such a manner that a delayed e.p. ap-peared alone or sometimes followed by a g. s. r.
4. By further repetitions of Kastate was reached in, which conditioned responses appeared only upon M but not upon K (differentiation).
In all these phenomena, e. p. are easier to be conditioned onditioned and more difficult to be extinguished than external responses. It may be concluded that e.p. are precursors for external responses and faithful indicators of the central mechanism of conditioning.