ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns two features of Jerzy Konorski's theory of inhibition, which were prominent in his 1948 book than in the Integrative Activity of the Brain. In Konorski's 1948 theory of inhibition, a radical distinction was drawn between the inhibition of classical and instrumental responses, paralleling the distinction between the acquisitions of these two kinds of behaviour. The suppression of instrumental responses was attributed by Konorski to a mechanism that termed as 'motor act inhibition'. The chapter follows McGowan, Hankins and Garcia's report that lateral, but not medial, septal lesions impair conditioned suppression. It explores whether the impairment in the discrimination between punishment and conditioned suppression, produced by chlordiazepoxide, could also be produced by septal lesions. The chapter tests the hypothesis that the minor tranquilizers alter behaviour through an action on the septohippocampal system, by seeing whether the effects of one of these drugs would be altered in animals that had undergone major disruption of this system.
