Conditioning decorticate canines in Culler's laboratory: some reflexions and second thoughts

Rapid expansion and increasing specialization, characteristics of the progress of science in general, occurred in physiological psychology in the 1930s. The development of E. A. K. Culler's laboratory at the University of Illinois may be representative of this phenomenon. Controversial problems raised during the writer's participation in the laboratory, such as conditioning in the decorticate and distribution and function of the cerebral auditory system, are considered from a present-day perspective. It is suggested that conceptual constraints imposed by some outstanding leaders, as illustrated with Pavlov, may no longer play the dominant role as described earlier in psychology's growth.