Orienting-searching reflex

In the case of innate drives enhancer regulation in the mesencephalon is responsible for both the formation of the subcortical active focus that maintains the enhanced orienting-searching reflex activity until the goal is reached and cortical active focus ( the cortical representation of the drive ). As natural conditions are always changing, even the goals determined by innate drives can be reached only with the participation of cortical neurons. The successful operation of an innate drive requires, namely, the continuous acquisition of proper chains of ECRs. 

We can easily understand the essential, drive-induced, behavioral consequences by observing the movement of rats in an open field with numbered squares in which activity is measured by the number of squares crossed in a 30-min period and by the total area covered during this period. Due to the innate orienting-searching reflex activity, a naive rat put in this open field looks searchingly around for a short while and then stops moving. 

Table 2.1. Demonstration of the drive-induced, essential behavioral consequences in an open field in rats The qualitative difference between an innate-, or acquired-drive-induced purposeful hypermotility, due to enhanced orienting-searching reflex activity,3 on the one hand, and amphetamine-induced purposeless hypermotility, due to continuous release of catecholamines from their intraneuronal stores, on the other ...

The orienting-searching reflex activity was measured in an open field in rats according to Knoll (1957). 

To answer these questions we need to consider a phenomenon of which we first took notice in the course of our behavioral studies on rats performed in the 1950s. We observed that hunger drive induced orienting-searching reflex activity was significantly more pronounced in young rats then in their elder peers (Knoll 1957). We repeatedly corroborated this observation later and described it for the last time in 1995 (Knoll and Miklya 1995.)... 

Figure 3.15 shows the striking difference in the intensity of orienting-searching reflex activity of hungry rats in surroundings quite new to them as a function of time elapsed from last feed. Rats in their uphill period of life... 

Lorenz (1981) recognized that some appetitive behaviors are FAPs, endogenously released and terminated upon detection of the key stimulus for the consummatory act that is the objective of the search. But, he did not develop the theoretical implications of this idea. Instead we must turn to the Russian physiologists who have spent 50 years studying orienting reflexes (Sokolov, 1963 Voronin et al., 1965, see also Berlyne, 1960). 

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