Pavlovs Experiment

This is something extremely interesting which I came about a few days ago..

A great thinker and physiologist, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, A Russian by birth, conducted an experiment to check the salivating reflex of a dog.

Everyday, he placed a bowl of meat outside the doorstep, rang the bell and opened the door, and the dog was greeted by the aroma of the chow, and so began drooling. He routinely followed the same pattern for over a month, and kept checking the levels to which the dog used to drool. Slowly he stopped placing the meat, and just rang the bell. Much to his surprise, the dog used to salivate to the same extent even a month after not being given any food. So this proved the dog responded not to the aroma, but to familiarity. It registered a cognizant thought that once the bell rings, there will be food.
Obviously this reduced in intensity as the dog realised it was a ruse, and no food would be available once the bell rang.


The same experiment was conducted in various ways to test a man's reaction to certain stimuli, and he responded similarly.

Pavlov's discovery was sensational and proved that man's senses which had no relation to a particular reflex, through experience can be tuned to certain stimuli and trigger reflexes. It became extremely important, as it helped in more objective methods of studying human behaviour.

Nowadays, this is used to treat the dreaded Alzheimeirs disease, amd certain phobias caused due to the surroundings, like claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces) and altophobia (fear of heights) through a process called systematic desensitization

Interesting ? Thought provoking ? Boring ? Please comment..

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. " - H. P. Lovecraft