ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors describe some research underway in their laboratory on the operant conditioning of two autonomic systems, the electrodermal and the cardiac. They explain the study of neural processes that regulate autonomic responding as the study of the "functional organization" of the autonomic nervous system. The authors focus on operant autonomic conditioning had two purposes. The first of these was to determine whether the mechanisms of operant electrodermal and heart rate conditioning are different, as is apparently true in classical conditioning. The second purpose of their experiments was to shed some light on the nature of the processes that control electrodermal activity and heart rate in the rat. The discrepancy may have been due to the use of lower shock intensity, although this seems unlikely since.4 ma shocks suppressed relative frequency when rats were punished for 75% of their largest responses while curarized.
