Subcortical Storage of Classical Conditioning

Abstract

MANY investigators^1–5 have emphasized the importance of the cerebral cortex in instrumental learning. They were able to demonstrate lateralization of learning to one cortical hemisphere using spreading depression as a technique of functional decortication. Bureš, Burešová and Fifková⁶, however, reported a failure to lateralize the effects of learning a passive avoidance response to one hemisphere, and attributed this failure to the possibility that such learning was a type of emotional conditioning involving predominantly subcortical mechanisms.