ABSTRACT
The conditioning of pyretic/ antipyretic responses demonstrates that body temperature is subject to behavioural conditioning effects. Since body temperature changes often occur in association with immune responses, these findings may have implications to behavioural conditioning of immunity, the outcome of which may reflect the indirect effects on immunity of inadvertent conditioning of thermoregulatory changes. One component of the immune response that has been found to respond to a conditioned stimulus is thermoregulation. Either increased or decreased body temperatures may be beneficial to the immune response, depending upon which activity is deemed desirable to enhance. R. Eikelboom and J. Stewart have argued that in a system subject to negative feedback control, such as thermoregulation, the direction on the conditioned response is determined by whether the drug is acting on the afferent or efferent arm of the feedback loop.
