Hippocampal lesions and associative learning in the pigeon

The performance of pigeons with hippocampal lesions was compared with that of unoperated and neostriatal-lesioned control Ss in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, hippocampal-lesioned birds were retarded in the acquisition and the maintenance levels of autoshaped responding. However, the deficit was attenuated following the addition of a response contingency to the autoshaping schedule. In Experiment 2, the hippocampal-lesioned birds showed impaired performance on a differential reinforcement of low rates of responding schedule. From the high levels of responding in Experiment 2, underresponding was observed in hippocampal-lesioned birds relative to control Ss on return to the autoshaping schedule in Experiment 3. Results are interpreted in terms of impaired classical conditioning in hippocampal-lesioned birds.