When the dog is repeatedly teased with the sight of objects inducing salivary secretion from a distance, the reaction of the salivary glands grows weaker and weaker and finally drops to zero.
Interpretation
This quote illustrates the concept of habituation, where repeated exposure to a stimulus reduces the response over time.
Ivan Pavlov's quote reflects his findings in classical conditioning and physiological responses, specifically how an organism's reaction diminishes when exposed to the same stimulus without reinforcement. In this scenario, the salivary glands of a dog eventually become less responsive to cues that previously triggered its salivation, highlighting the importance of consistency and expectation in learning and behavioral response.
In practice
In a psychology lecture about conditioning, you could use this quote to demonstrate how repeated exposures affect behavior.
If we could look through the skull into the brain of a consciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excitability were luminous, then we should see playing over the cerebral surface, a bright spot with fantastic, waving borders constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a darkness more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemisphere.
From the described experiment it is clear that the mere act of eating, the food even not reaching the stomach, determines the stimulation of the gastric glands.
It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.
Science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching.
Learn the ABC of science before you try to ascend to its summit.
Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them.
The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination!
With any hallucinations, if you can do functional brain imagery while they're going on, you will find that the parts of the brain usually involved in seeing or hearing - in perception - have become super active by themselves. And this is an autonomous activity; this does not happen with imagination.
Having been the discoverer of many splendid things, he is said to have asked his friends and relations that, after his death, they should place on his tomb a cylinder enclosing a sphere, writing on it the proportion of the containing solid to that which is contained.
Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.
Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.
Brain studies of mental workouts in which you sustain a single, chosen focus show that the more you detach from what's distracting you and refocus on what you should be paying attention to, the stronger this brain circuitry becomes.
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