Hippocampus, context, and conditioning.

Rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) with lesions to either the hippocampus or overlying neocortex and unoperated controls underwent acquisition of the classically conditioned nictitating membrane response to a tone conditioned stimulus and an air puff unconditioned stimulus until they reached a criterion of 8 conditioned responses in any block of 10 trials. They were then returned to their cages. On the next day, they were either placed in the same context in which they underwent initial conditioning or switched to a new context that distinctly differed along olfactory, visual, and tactile dimensions.

Behavior modification in the treatment of obesity. The problem of maintaining weight loss.

The introduction of behavior modification in the treatment of obesity a decade ago resulted in a substantial increase in weight loss of persons treated for mild to moderate obesity. It has been hoped that this increased effectiveness of treatment would extend also to maintenance of weight loss, and the first controlled clinical trial suggested that it did. This article reports the results of (1) a five-year follow-up of this first trial and (2) all follow-up studies of behavior modification for obesity yet conducted, six published and four previously unpublished.

Functional asymmetry of the human brain.

Verbal and nonverbal memorization skills were tested before and after electroconvulsive shocks to the left, right, or both cerebral hemispheres of neurologically normal patients. As predicted, decrements for the left-hemisphere-shocked group were larger on the verbal than nonverbal tasks, while the reverse was true for the right-hemisphere-shocked group. Largest decrements on both tasks were shown by the bilaterally shocked group.