Pavlovian Conditioning, Negative Feedback, and Blocking: Mechanisms that Regulate Association Formation

• Published in: Neuron Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 625 - 627
• Main Author: Fanselow, Michael S.
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01-04-1998
• Subjects: Animals; Association Learning - physiology; Biofeedback, Psychology - physiology; Brain - physiology; Conditioning, Classical - physiology; Electroshock; Fear; Models, Neurological; Models, Psychological
• ISSN: 0896-6273; 1097-4199
• DOI: 10.1016/S0896-6273(00)81002-8

From accounts of the neural substrates postulated to underlie memory to psychology textbook descriptions, there is a pervasive but inaccurate perception of the learning process: that association formation results simply through the contiguity or pairing of events. Indeed, if one asked for a one-word description of what causes Pavlovian conditioning, the modal response will likely be "pairing." In the archetypal experiment, an arbitrary stimulus such as a bell is paired with placement of food in a dog's mouth. On the first experience with these stimuli the dog does little but orient toward the bell, but it chews, salivates on, and swallows the food or unconditional stimulus (US). Following pairing of these stimuli the bell, now a conditional stimulus (CS), causes the dog to move about excitedly, wag its tail, and salivate (Zener, 1937). The word "pairing" not only reflects the casual observer's understanding of conditioning; it is also at the core of traditional theoretical models of the processes that cause conditioning. This view is that temporal contiguity, the learning theorist's technical term for pairing, is the necessary and sufficient requirement for the acquisition of conditional responding to the CS. At the cellular level, the mechanisms proposed as the neural substrates of learning, such as long-term potentiation, are simply contiguity detectors.