Correlation of overt escape behavior, multiunit thalamic activity, and midbrain lemniscal stimulation in rats.
An acute and a chronic experiment were conducted in order to assess the extent to which ventral thalamic multiunit activity could account for the specific form of bar-pressing escape behavior in rats stimulated by trains of midbrain medial lemniscal pulse pairs. A paradigm used by Kestenbaum, Deutsch, and Coons was utilized in which the intra-pair interval of the train was varied. Results in anesthetized and freely moving animals indicated that midbrain lemniscal stimulation produces both an excitatory short-latency thalamic response showing the property of temporal facilitation and a long-lasting inhibitory process consistent with results of studies using anesthetized cats. The overall electrophysiological response, however, correlated significantly with the behavioral response function.
D000771:Anesthesia, Intravenous; D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D004594:Electrophysiology; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology*; D008636:Mesencephalon / Q000502:physiology*; D010146:Pain / Q000209:etiology; D051381:Rats; D011930:Reaction Time; D012653:Self Stimulation; D013787:Thalamic Nuclei / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors