Measuring Pavlovian appetitive conditioning in humans with the postauricular reflex.

ABSTRACT: Despite its evolutionary and clinical significance, appetitive conditioning has been rarely investigated in humans. It has been proposed that this discrepancy might stem from the difficulty in finding suitable appetitive stimuli that elicit strong physiological responses. However, this might also be due to a possible lack of sensitivity of the psychophysiological measures commonly used to index human appetitive conditioning. Here, we investigated whether the postauricular reflex-a vestigial muscle microreflex that is potentiated by pleasant stimuli relative to neutral and unpleasant stimuli-may provide a valid psychophysiological indicator of appetitive conditioning in humans. To this end, we used a delay differential appetitive conditioning procedure, in which a neutral stimulus was conti

SUBMITTER: Stussi Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6100102 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature