Frontal lobotomy and the elimination of conditioned anxiety in the rat.
- 1 January 1955
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology
- Vol. 48 (2) , 126-129
- https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047768
Abstract
Twenty experimental and 20 control rats were conditioned to display anxiety (crouching and immobility) in an electrified grillbox. The experimental animals were then subjected to cerebral frontal lobotomy, and the control animals to a sham operation. Upon retesting for anxiety, it was discovered that the experimental animals displayed fewer of the responses indicative of anxiety than did the controls; differences were significant well beyond the .01% level of confidence. The common notion that lobotomy tends to abolish anxiety thus receives considerable support.Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Studies of anxiety: I. The production of a feeding inhibition in dogs.Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 1950