Bernard Tursky

Decreased Systolic Blood Pressure through Operant Conditioning Techniques in Patients with Essential Hypertension

Operant conditioning-feedback techniques were employed to lower systolic blood pressure in seven patients with essential hypertension. In five of the patients, meaningful decreases of systolic blood pressure were obtained in the laboratory, ranging from 16 to 34 millimeters of mercury. The therapeutic value of such techniques remains to be established.

Effects of Feedback and Reinforcement on the Control of Human Systolic Blood Pressure

An automatic procedure providing information about human systolic blood pressure at each successive heartbeat under routine laboratory conditions is described. Twenty normal male subjects were given feedback of their own systolic pressure, half operantly reinforced for increasing and half reinforced for decreasing their pressure. Significant differences in pressure were obtained in a single session. The apparatus and results suggest a possible approach to the treatment of essential hypertension.

Differentiation of heart rate and systolic blood pressure in man by operant conditioning.

&NA; Human heart rate‐systolic blood pressure decoupling was tested by operant conditioning procedures. Twenty normal male subjects were given feedback of their heart rate, half operantly reinforced for increasing and half for decreasing their heart rate, while systolic blood pressure was continuously monitored. Significant heart rate conditioning was obtained in a single session without concomitant effects on blood pressure. Further analyses of the best conditioners in the present study and those in a previous blood pressure conditioning study indicate the strength of operant heart rate‐blood pressure decoupling and demonstrate that instrumental fractionation of closely related visceral behavior is possible in man.

Shock-Elicited Pain and Its Reduction by Concurrent Tactile Stimulation

Human affective reactions to nociceptive electrical stimulation were attenuated by application of a tactile stimulus to the shocked site. No alteration was perceived when the same tactile stimulus was applied to a similar contralateral site. These results and a lack of alteration at sensation threshold demonstrate the effect to be more than simple masking and support the Melzack-Wall theory.

Differentiation of an autonomic response through operant reinforcement

Making reinforcement contingent upon the emission of a skin potential response maintains a stable rate of responding in contrast to a declining rate in a non-contingently reinforced control group. The effect is independent of changes in related response systems.

Learned control of cardiovascular integration in man through operant conditioning.

&NA; In previous research, it has been shown that subjects can learn to increase or decrease their systolic blood pressure without corresponding changes in heart rate, or they can learn to increase or decrease their heart rate without corresponding changes in blood pressure. The present paper outlines a method for directly conditioning a combination of two autonomic responses. A system was developed which, at each heart cycle, determines on line whether heart rate and blood pressure are integrated (both increasing or both decreasing) or differentiated (one increasing and one decreasing). To test this method, 5 subjects received a brief light and tone feedback only when their heart rate and blood pressure were simultaneously increasing, and 5 subjects received the feedback only when their heart rate and blood pressure were simultaneously decreasing. Subjects earned rewards consisting of slides and monetary bonuses each time they produced 12 correct heart rate‐blood pressure combinations. Significant cardiovascular integration was obtained in a single session. Subjects rewarded for simultaneous increases in heart rate and blood pressure showed small, comparable increases in both, while subjects rewarded for simultaneous decreases showed sizeable decreases in both. Applications of the method in research and treatment are discussed.

Body Image, Anxiety, and Tolerance for Experimental Pain

&NA; Tolerance for pain resulting from a controlled electric shock to the forearm was studied in relation to body image and anxiety. A significant positive correlation was found between pain tolerance and definiteness of body boundaries. A significant negative correlation was found between Holtzmans modification of the Elizur Rorschach Content Scale and pain tolerance. However, pain tolerance was not correlated with a more focused measure of body anxiety.

Integrators as measuring devices of bioelectric output

It is difficult to quantify gross muscle spasms from the clinical electromyogmphic record. The use of integmtion techniques simplifies this task. Three such techniques are described: continuous avemging, voltage compamtor, and time reset. The use of integrators to convelt the high‐frequency EMG potentials to a slowly changing analogue voltage makes it possible to employ a data sampling concept based on experimental rather than physiologic band width. This reduces the problems of sampling and storage of information if data processing is being done by computer.

Abnormalities in Skin Potential Fluctuations During the Sleep of Acute Schizophrenic Patients

&NA; Spontaneous skin potential fluctuations (SPF) were recorded during the sleep of 8 acute schizophrenic patients and 6 normal volunteers. While in normals the SPFs decreased during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and were most numerous during Stages III and IV, the acute schizophrenics had the greatest number of SPFs during REM sleep and waking, and fewest during Stages III and IV sleep. It is hypothesized that this effect represents a lack of normal control during REM sleep in the acute schizophrenic patients. It may be related to the recently reported failure of acute schizophrenics to have post‐REM‐deprivation supranormal levels of REM seen in normals. It is also possibly connected to a hypothesized serotonergic REM system.

Relationship of electrodermal lability and reflex sensitivity to differential conditioning

Differential electrodermal (skin potential) conditioning was established in a group of 38 Ss. Two measures of unconditioned electrodermal activity correlated highly with both CS+ and CS− response magnitudes during a seriez of extinction test trials. No relationship was founds, however, between the unconditioned activity measures and differential conditioning.