Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University, BMC F10, 22184, Lund, Sweden.
Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus Medical Center, 3000, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jun 13;7(1):3404. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-03343-2.
Can humans produce well-timed blink responses to a neutral stimulus voluntarily, without receiving any blink-eliciting, unconditional, stimulus? And if they can, to what degree does classical eyeblink conditioning depend on volition? Here we show that voluntary blink responses learned in two paradigms that did not involve any unconditional blink-eliciting stimuli, display timing that is as good, or better than, the timing of blink responses learned in a standard eyeblink conditioning paradigm. The exceptional timing accuracy likely stems from the fact that, in contrast to previous studies, we challenged our participants to blink in a timed manner, and not merely to blink so as to avoid the corneal air puff. These results reveal a remarkable level of voluntary control over a simple movement, and they challenge the view that learning during eyeblink conditioning is necessarily automatic and involuntary.
人类能否在没有接受任何眨眼诱发、无条件刺激的情况下，自主地对中性刺激做出适时的眨眼反应？如果可以，经典的眨眼条件反射在多大程度上取决于意志？在这里，我们展示了在两个范式中学习到的自主眨眼反应，这两个范式都不涉及任何无条件的眨眼诱发刺激，其表现出的时间准确性与在标准眨眼条件反射范式中学习到的眨眼反应一样好，甚至更好。这种出色的定时准确性可能源于这样一个事实，与之前的研究相比，我们要求参与者以定时的方式眨眼，而不仅仅是为了避免角膜空气喷流而眨眼。这些结果揭示了人类对简单运动的显著自主控制水平，它们也挑战了眨眼条件反射过程中的学习必然是自动和无意识的观点。
