Retention of the escape reflex after prefrontal lobectomy in cats.

From a short review of respective data (Zielinski 1966) it follows that after frontal lesions defensive classical conditioned reflexes were either enhanced or not changed, whereas instrumental avoidance reflexes were as a rule deteriorated. It is difficult to accept the explanation of the deterioration of the avoidance reflex as a consequence of the "loss of drive inhibition" (Konorski 1961) or "drive disinhibition" (Brutkowski and Wojtczak-Jaroszowa 1963, Brutkowski 1965). According to these hypotheses the same factor-increase of drive-is responsible for changes of both classical and instrumental defensive reflexes. In the case of avoidance reflex it was assumed that the overexcitement of frontal animals and their hyperreactivity to conditioned stimuli bring into action more primitive forms of defensive reactions interfering with performance of skilled instrumental response. Recently, a new hypothesis was presented, which assumes that the different effect of frontal lesions on classical and instrumental defensive reflexes may be related to dissociation between drive and consummatory reflexes (Soltysik and Jaworska 1967). Previous experiments on the classical defensive reflexes in frontal animals were restricted, as a rule, to the consummatory activities, whereas instrumental avoidance reflex is by definition (cf. Konorski 1967) a drive reflex. Some dat~a suggest that neither in normal (Jaworska et al. 1962) nor in frontal animals (Soltysik and Jaworska 1967) need there be a parallelism in drive and consummatory reflexes. In the bast paper the authors have presented results of experiment on dogs with preoperatively acquired classical defensive conditioned reflexes in which after prefrontal lobectomy lower