Cortical multineuronal activity in dogs with defensive instrumental conditioned reflex.

For the first time in dogs with semi-microelectrodes chronically implanted in the motor and somatosensory region of the cortex, background multineuronal activity (MNA) was recorded over the long term followed by an amplitudinal discrimination from the MNA of impulse series presumably belonging to cells of large, medium, and small size was performed. The presence of close synergistic functional connections, particularly significant during the avoidance conditioned reflex and its extinction, was established by determining the correlation coefficient (CC) between the impulse flows of these neurons. In trained animals the highest CC values were observed between neurons with a small and medium spike amplitude. The network properties of identified neurons were studied by constructing histograms of cross interval relationships. The connections established were of primarily a unilateral, excitatory character.