Cardiovascular Conditioning

Pavlovian or classical conditioning refers to a behavioral paradigm in which a neutral stimulus, the conditioned stimulus (CS), is temporally associated with another stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus (US), that elicits an unlearned or unconditioned response (UR). Under appropriate conditions the organism learns that the CS is associated with the US, and presentation of the CS alone will elicit a conditioned or learned response (CR) that may or may not resemble the UR. This class of simple associative learning paradigms has been extensively used to study learning of skeletomotor responses. However, it is also quite effective for establishing learned autonomic responses, including responses of the cardiovascular system.