Studies of the role of the brain cholinergic system in the mechanisms of dissociative learning.

Rats were trained to make conditioned food reflex excursions in two states: in normal conditions and on a background of treatment with pharmacological agents producing dissociative states. A number of cholinergic substances were completely interchangeable in dissociative learning; anticholinergic compounds efficiently neutralized the ability of cholinergic substances to produce dissociative states; muscarinic cholinoreceptors played the leading role in production of the dissociative state.