Superstitious bar pressing in hippocampal and septal rats.
Unlike normal animals or those with sham lesions, rats with hippocampal and septal lesions behaved in an operant chamber as if a dependency existed between pellet delivery and their behavior, despite the fact that reinforcement was based on time, not behavior, and was therefore free. This superstitious behavior did not result from a general inability to inhibit responding, as responding rapidly ceased when the pellets were discontinued. These findings suggest that the hippocampus integrates information regarding response-reinforcer relations, which in the normal rat permits superfluous operant behavior to be eliminated.
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012686:Septal Nuclei / Q000502:physiology*; D013483:Superstitions