Sensory and associative effects of LSD in classical conditioning of rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) nictitating membrane response.

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) at a dose of 30 nmol/kg enhances the acquisition of classically conditioned nictitating membrane responses in rabbits. Three experiments showed that LSD specifically improves learning, not performance, by increasing the frequency of conditioned responses and lowering the threshold for the conditioned stimulus intensity. LSD did not alter unconditioned response amplitude or the sensory processing of the unconditioned stimulus. The drug's enhancement of conditioned stimulus sensory processing is proposed to facilitate conditioning through both learning and performance mechanisms.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to determine the effects of LSD (30 nmol/kg) on the acquisition of the rabbit's classically conditioned nictitating membrane response. Experiment 1 revealed that LSD significantly enhanced the acquisition of conditioned responses [CRs], and control groups receiving unpaired conditioned stimulus/unconditioned stimulus (CS/UCS) presentations served to identify LSD's effect to be on learning. Accordingly, subsequent efforts were directed at determining whether LSD's enhancing effects could have arisen from its altering the sensory processing of the CS and/or the UCS. In Experiment 1, unconditioned response (UCR) amplitude to a 30mA UCS was not significantly affected by LSD. Moreover, Experiment 2 revealed that LSD had no significant effect on the psychophysical functions relating UCS intensity to the frequency or amplitude of UCRs and that the drug did not affect the UCS-intensity threshold for evoking UCRs. On the other hadn, Experiment 3 revealed that LSD significantly enhanced the frequency of CRs to an extended range of CS intensities in the psychophysical function relating CS intensity to CR frequency. Furthermore, LSD lowered the CS-intensity threshold. The drug's enhancement of the sensory processing of the CS was postulated to facilitate conditioning through both learning and preformance mechanisms.