Conditioned response of middle ear muscles

Abstract

Simple and differentially conditioned responses of the middle ear muscles to visual stimuli were produced in awake cats with electrodes implanted chronically on the round windows. Muscle contractions were observed indirectly through their effects on the cochlear microphonic. These CRs are easily produced and have very short latencies (80 msec.) under optimal conditions. Somewhat longer minimal latencies (150 msec.) were measured in the differential learning situation. The stapedius was shown to play the dominant role in those conditioning experiments where only one of the two middle ear muscles was left intact.