Verification of Skeletal Activity in Tibial Nerve Recordings: A Reply to Roberts (1991)

In Dworkin and Dworkin (1990) , we described classically conditioned tibial nerve responses that were uncorrelated with vasomotor responses in the same limb. We pointed out that this finding conflicted with the persisting idea that skeletal and autonomic responses are permanently locked into fixed a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral neuroscience 1991-10, Vol.105 (5), p.773-779
Main Authors: Dworkin, Barry R, Dworkin, Susan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal
Animals
Autonomic Nervous System - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Classical Conditioning
Conditioning, Classical - physiology
Electrophysiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Habituation
Hindlimb - innervation
Muscle Contraction - physiology
Muscle Relaxing Drugs
Muscle, Smooth, Vascular - innervation
Muscles - innervation
Paralysis
Physiological Correlates
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rats
Spinal Nerves
Sweat Glands - innervation
Tibial Nerve - physiology
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Summary:In Dworkin and Dworkin (1990) , we described classically conditioned tibial nerve responses that were uncorrelated with vasomotor responses in the same limb. We pointed out that this finding conflicted with the persisting idea that skeletal and autonomic responses are permanently locked into fixed action patterns that can not be reorganized by learning ( Cohen & Obrist, 1975 ). Roberts (1991) has doubted our interpretation. In this reply, we rebut his arguments and also describe new pharmacological and other recent data showing unambiguously that the nerve activity we measured was not of postganglionic sympathetic origin. We conclude that the nerve activity was most probably due to motoneurons and reiterate that the results of our experiment specifically failed to support a general assertion of obligatory central coupling between skeletal and autonomic mechanisms.
ISSN:0735-7044
1939-0084
DOI:10.1037/0735-7044.105.5.773