Operant conditioning of vertical eye movements without visual feedback in the midpontine pretrigeminal cat

An operant conditioning of vertical eye movements was achieved in the midpontine pretrigeminal cat in total darkness by contingent reinforcement of spontaneous eye movements with lateral hypothalamic (LHT) reward stimulation, when each movement (upward direction was chosen in this experiment) exceeded a preset amplitude. However, the response rates in the dark were lower than those in the light and the time to reach the peak response rate was much longer. Recording of evoked potentials to optic chiasma (OC) stimulation revealed enhancement of late components of the visual cortex (VC) and superior colliculus (SC) responses in relation to eye movements. Sequential records of the averaged evoked responses associated with eye movements indicated that the amplitudes of the late components of the VC and SC waves gradually increased in the course of establishment of the operant conditioning, and decreased gradually during extinction. In a yoked control test, increase in amplitudes of the late components was much less significant during non-contingent reinforcement given independently of the eye movements. These results suggest that 'corollary discharge' may play a critical role as a cue in acquisition of the operant conditioning of vertical eye movements when visual feedback is absent in total darkness.