ABSTRACT

The conditioned reflex activity becomes highly confused, and more often completely vanishes; in the course of the experiment the animal is in an almost continuous hypnotic state, manifesting its various phases. In the course of experiments with conditioned reflexes in various difficult and pathological states of the nervous system it is often observed that temporary inhibition leads to a temporary improvement in these states; in one dog there was twice observed a patent catatonic state, which resulted in a marked decline of a chronic and persistent nervous disorder, almost in a return to the normal for several days in succession. The positive reflex becomes unusually stable: its extinction proceeds more slowly than that of the normal reflexes; it is less susceptible to successive inhibition by other, inhibitory conditioned stimuli; it often stands out in bold relief for its strength among all other conditioned reflexes, which was not observed prior to the disorder.