Classic conditioning of the ventilatory responses in rats

Nsegbe, Elise, Guy Vardon, Pierre Perruchet, and Jorge Gallego. Classic conditioning of the ventilatory responses in rats. J. Appl. Physiol. 83(4): 1174–1183, 1997.—Recent authors have stressed the role of conditioning in the control of breathing, but experimental evidence of this role is still sparse and contradictory. To establish that classic conditioning of the ventilatory responses can occur in rats, we performed a controlled experiment in which a 1-min tone [conditioned stimulus (CS)] was paired with a hypercapnic stimulus [8.5% CO2, unconditioned stimulus (US)]. The experimental group ( n = 9) received five paired CS-US presentations, followed by one CS alone to test conditioning. Th…