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Psychosomatic Medicine 32:359-368 (1970)
© 1970 American Psychosomatic Society

Effect of Instrumental Heart-Rate Training on Rat Cardiac and Brain Catecholamines

LEO V. DICARA PhD1 and ERIC A. STONE PhD1

1 Rockefeller University New York, NY

Address for reprint requests: Dr. L. DiCara, Rockefeller University, East 66th St and York Ave, New York, NY 10021

Instrumental learning of heart rate in the rat results in catecholamine changes in heart and brain. Separate groups of curarized and artificially respirated rats were rewarded by direct electric stimulation of the medial forebrain bundle in the hypothalamus for either increases or decreases in heart rate. Rats that learned large and significant increases in heart rate showed significantly higher endogenous cardiac and brain-stem catecholamine levels than rats that learned to decrease heart rate. Control experiments on curarized and noncurarized rats indicated that it is the learning of heart-rate responses that is associated with the changes in cardiac and brain catecholamines and not the short- or long-range effects of curarization and/or brain stimulation. Analysis of the retention of cardiac H3-norepinephrine suggests that rats trained to decrease heart rate under curare were subjected to greater stress than rats trained to increase heart rate.

Submitted on November 14, 1969
Revised on February 12, 1970






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Copyright © 1970 by the American Psychosomatic Society