Habituation of orienting and motor responses elicited by stimulation of the cortex in the cat

Orienting and motor responses have been elicited by electrical stimulation of the cortex in the unanesthetized, freely moving cat. A total of 73 electrodes from 29 cats was studied. The orienting response was elicited from 56 sites. The response was undistinguishable from that elicited by ordinary sensory stimulation, and no difference was observed in the responses elicited from different cortical areas. Motor responses were observed less frequently. The orienting response showed habituation and dishabituation in all cases except 4. This finding is in agreement with previous work in this area. However, motor responses, with or without accompanying orienting responses, also showed habituation, dishabituation, and even savings from one day to another. Stimulus recognition models [10] seem inadequate to explain our findings for the motor response, but the data are explained by synaptic models of habituation [3].