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Conditioning, awareness, and the hippocampus
Author(s) -
LaBar Kevin S.,
Disterhoft John F.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
hippocampus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.767
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1098-1063
pISSN - 1050-9631
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1098-1063(1998)8:6<620::aid-hipo4>3.0.co;2-6
Subject(s) - psychology , context (archaeology) , neuroscience , hippocampus , cognitive psychology , trace (psycholinguistics) , eyeblink conditioning , classical conditioning , neuroimaging , cognitive neuroscience , cognitive science , cognition , fear conditioning , conditioning , amygdala , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , biology
For the past 50 years, psychologists have wrestled with questions regarding the relationship between conscious awareness and human conditioned behavior. A recent proposal that the hippocampus mediates awareness during trace conditioning (Clark, Squire, Science 1998;280:77–81) has extended the awareness‐conditioning debate to the neuroscience arena. In the following commentary, we raise specific theoretical and methodological issues regarding the Clark and Squire study and place their finding into a broader context. Throughout our discussion, we consider the difficulties in assessing subjective awareness, the importance of establishing necessary and sufficient conditions for cognitive mediation effects, the influence of conditioned response modality, and the nature of hippocampal requirements across conditioning protocols. It is clear that trace eyeblink conditioning is a hippocampal‐dependent task, but whether awareness is a necessary component of trace conditioning is not definitively proven. We propose that future functional neuroimaging studies and behavioral experiments using on‐line measures of awareness may help clarify the relationship among classical conditioning, awareness, and the hippocampus. Hippocampus 1998;8:620–626. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.