Extended dissociative training of sudomotor response patterns

Area of Science:

• Psychophysiology
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Somatic Motor Control

Background:

• Understanding the interplay between autonomic and somatic nervous systems is crucial.
• Instrumental learning paradigms offer a method to investigate voluntary control over physiological responses.
• Previous research has explored the potential for uncoupling visceral and somatic behaviors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if instrumental learning can decouple skin conductance (autonomic) from respiratory or subtle body movements (somatic).
• To investigate the strategies subjects employ when attempting to dissociate autonomic and somatic responses.
• To examine the influence of habituation and compensatory strategies on visceral-somatic correlations.

Main Methods:

• Participants underwent 15 training sessions with biofeedback for skin conductance and either respiration or body movement.
• Integration trials required increasing both skin conductance and the concomitant behavior.
• Dissociation trials required increasing skin conductance while maintaining the concomitant behavior, with subsequent analysis of compensatory somatic activities.

Main Results:

• All subjects successfully integrated autonomic and somatic responses.
• A majority of subjects in the respiration group increased skin conductance without altering breathing patterns, but utilized volar activities.
• Subjects in the movement group also employed volar activities, identifying manipulations that bypassed movement transducers; compensatory strategies affected response correlations.

Conclusions:

• Instrumental learning did not result in the complete uncoupling of visceral-somatic linkages.
• Somatic strategies, particularly volar activities, were adopted to achieve autonomic response goals.
• The findings challenge the notion that autonomic and somatic behaviors can be independently controlled through instrumental learning.