Human Pavlovian decelerative cardiac conditioning based on a respiratory-induced cardiac deceleration as an unconditional reflex

The effects of emotional behaviour on components of the respiratory cycle

The present study was designed to examine affect-related respiratory responses during film scenes, reaction time (RT) and cold pressor (CP) tasks. In addition, I investigated whether affect-related respiratory responses could be characterised by a number of underlying dimensions, such as positive versus negative affect and active versus passive coping. Respiratory output was indexed by a detailed analyses of various volumetric and timing components of the breathing cycle. There were fundamental differences in respiratory responses to different types of affective and cognitively demanding tasks. The emotionally loaded film stimuli showed clear effects on respiration whenever the films elicited amusement and disgust. That is, amusement (laughter) induced a decrease in inspiratory time and tidal volume, whereas disgust could be linked to a prolongation of inspiratory pauses (breath-holding). Relative to a pretask baseline, RT performance elicited a relatively fast, shallow and regular breathing pattern. The pattern of breathing in response to CP was in stark contrast to the RT task, in that a substantial increase in tidal volume, minute ventilation, mean inspiratory flow and breathing irregularity was accompanied by no change in total cycle duration. The implications of these results are discussed with regard to specificity and dimensional models. It is suggested that specificity models might apply to phasic respiratory activity such as breath-holding in disgust and pain. On the other hand, breathing irregularity and expiratory pause duration appears to correspond to emotion dimensions (positive versus negative affect) that cut across the boundaries of emotion categories. Lastly, there were the respiratory patterns that could be more readily interpreted in terms of a task-involvement or active versus passive coping attitude.

Ivanov-Smolensky conditioning: relationship between CR and UR form and intensity

The Ivanov-Smolensky conditioning procedure involves a CS followed by a command (US). There are two URs--an instructed UR and a reflexive UR such as an autonomic reaction. Anticipatory responses during the CS, of either the instructed or reflexive UR, provide a measure of conditioning. We examined whether the reflexive CR and UR are similar in form, and whether larger reflexive CRs and URs are associated with larger instructed URs. Subjects were asked to exhale "quickly and powerfully" (exhalation was thus the instructed UR) either following (Forward) or prior to (Backward) a light CS; a change in heart rate to the CS (reflexive CR) alone was the index of conditioning. The heart rate CR and UR were both deceleratory in nature, although the onset of the CR was faster than the UR. In addition, Backward-conditioned subjects demonstrated some degree of inhibitory control by the CS. Finally, the CR intensity was inversely related to exhalation magnitude.

Heart-rate decelerative Pavlovian conditioning with tilt as UCS: towards behavioural control of cardiac dysfunction

As part of a programme the ultimate goal of which is to teach behavioural control of stress-induced maladaptive cardiac accelerations through Pavlovian decelerative conditioning, this study was directed at examining the feasibility of using tilting of the body from a head-up to a head-down position as the unconditional stimulus (UCS) to elicit phasic cardiac deceleration as the unconditional response (UCR). Experiment I assessed the reflexive features of the cardiac response to 32 tilt UCS trials delivered at mean intervals of 75 sec. The results yielded a large-magnitude (over 30 BsPM) cardiac decelerative UCR with fast recruitment and complete resistance to habituation. Experiment II examined the feasibility of using the tilt UCS to demonstrate associative control over decelerative responding to a tone as the conditional stimulus (CS). Relative to a control 'backward' UCS-CS group with an interstimulus interval (ISI) of 14.5 sec, a 0.5 sec ISI CS-UCS experimental group demonstrated both orderly acquisition and extinction performance. The magnitude of the conditional deceleration of some 4 BsPM is greater than the extent of control generally achieved with biofeedback, but still constitutes a problem for theoretical accounts of classical conditioning framed in terms of stimulus substitution, and is still only of borderline clinical significance.