The herd reflex appears gradually. Appearance one or a group of animals of their species is remembered as a positive environmental factor. It becomes the causative agent of the herd reflex in a young animal. The herd reflex is formed and exists on the basis of an innate defensive reflex. It is the feeling of greater security among people like themselves that reinforces the previously indifferent stimulus - the herd, turning it into a conditioned reflex. The herd reflex is developed in all animals of this species and is fixed for life.
Similar reflexes called conditional natural, emphasizing the word "natural" their proximity to the biological species characteristics of animals. These reflexes are characteristic of a given animal in the same way as the structure of its teeth or color. In addition to gregarious, they include many food, orienting, thermoregulatory and others.
natural conditioned reflexes formed in certain period animal life. In the first hours of life, babies learn to recognize the voice and appearance of their mother, remember the position of sucking milk. When researchers bottle-fed animals taken from their mothers immediately after birth, they began to treat them like parents: they followed them everywhere, and when they were hungry, they asked for food. Already being adults, such animals are not afraid, like the rest, when a person comes to the herd, but run up to him.
During the first weeks, reflexes are developed communicating with animals of their own species (social). At a certain period of life, animals learn to distinguish edible food from unsuitable food. Often this happens when observing how the mother feeds. Acquired skills are retained for life and change with great difficulty. So, in the 60s. of the last century, about 5 thousand reindeer were driven from the tundra of Northern Kamchatka to the south into the taiga zone. As a result, almost all of these deer died of starvation. According to the shepherds, they were able to get food only from under the snow, but did not guess to eat lichens hanging on trees - one of the main food in the taiga zone.
Ideas about natural conditioned reflexes are associated with the development of the idea of ​​the heterogeneity of natural stimuli as stimuli for animal behavior. In the experiments of D.A. Biryukov's ducks, which had previously memorized signals such as bells with great difficulty, after two or three repetitions developed a conditioned reflex to clap on the water, which obviously reminded them of the flapping of the wings of a duck taking off from the water. YES. Biryukov proposed to call such signals adequate stimuli, thereby emphasizing the correspondence of these signals to the entire mood of the nervous system of a given animal ( Baskin, 1977). It is adequate stimuli that largely determine the behavior of animals in nature. The body structure of animals and the characteristics of their sense organs are evolutionarily adapted to perceive and respond to such signals.
An animal with a sufficient set of natural conditioned reflexes already prepared to survive. However, his education does not end there. A number of conditioned reflexes are also needed, detailing the acquaintance of the animal with the environment.
It is necessary to single out a group of conditioned reflexes that are developed in all animals included in a given herd, and more random reflexes, without which an animal can often live. For example, all animals remember the methods of obtaining food, seasonal feeding grounds, migration routes, and ways of escaping from predators that are characteristic of the area. Examples can be given:
- the ability of many ungulates to compensate for the lack of salts in the body with sea water or from mineral springs and deposits of brackish clays;
- seasonal migrations of fish from baiting places to spawning places;
- Perception by many animals of the cries of birds as a signal of the approach of a predator;
- ungulates leave when predators attack impregnable rocks.
A significant part of these skills is acquired as a result of imitation of parents or older comrades.

Mediated learning

In almost all species of mammals and birds, as well as in many species of fish, there is a phenomenon that we call mediated learning: this is the mutual learning of animals, the acquisition by them of new elements of behavior during communication that increase the stability, "reliability" of the population in the struggle for existence. Indirect learning usually occurs on the basis of the innate ability of animals to imitate, often reinforced by certain signaling and reinforced by memory. We can talk about two types of mediated learning, constantly intertwined and complementing each other: learning in non-family groups of animals and learning in family groups.

signal succession. In the postnatal period, the most important is training in family groups. The training of young animals by their parents, well developed in birds and mammals, leads to a certain family continuity of behavioral traditions, which is why it is called signal continuity.
This phenomenon occurs as a result of the so-called biological contact of generations and is a purely functional continuity of adaptive reactions. At the same time, the previous generations, through learning, pass on to the subsequent ones the information they have accumulated and the corresponding behavioral features. These features themselves are not fixed genetically, but are persistently transmitted to offspring by virtue of imitation of parents or with the help of special signaling. Signal continuity has become, as it were, an additional link between innate elements of behavior, relatively stable, and individually acquired elements, extremely labile. She significantly enriched and improved the behavioral complex of animals, combining the experience of many generations and contributing to the formation of a diverse and complex signaling in them.
Such training is based on imprinting. It is the imprinting of parents and the desire to obey and imitate them for a certain period of time that create a solid foundation for signal succession. Then follows a whole system of education of these young animals, including imitation, following, a whole range of signals, and often rewards and punishments. In some vertebrates, this learning period is short, while in others it is very short. long time.
Representatives of the class of fish, as a rule, lack signal continuity, although, as was shown above, learning in flocks ("group learning") occurs very widely among them.
In birds, signaling continuity is highly developed. It is known that almost all of their species - both chicks and broods, raise their chicks and train them. This training covers wide areas of life: defense against enemies, feeding and foraging, flight, orientation, many signals, singing features, and so on.
K. Lorenz (1970) describes the features of learning chicks from jackdaws and concludes: “An animal that is not instinctively aware of its enemies from birth receives information from older and more experienced individuals of its species about who and what to be afraid of. This is truly a tradition, broadcast individual experience, acquired knowledge from generation to generation". Describing the training of chicks by parents from birds of the order of passerines, A.N. Promptov comes to the conclusion that "a rather complex" arsenal "of skills that make up the biological" traditions of the species "is not hereditary, but for the most part representing just the most subtle "balancing" of the organism with environmental conditions "( Manteuffel, 1980).
In brood birds, from the very first day of life, chicks follow their mother everywhere, imitating her, copying her movements and obeying her signals. Thus, they quickly learn the objects and methods of feeding, as well as the recognition of their enemies and the methods of protection (hiding) when the female alarm signals.
In nestling birds, two periods of signal succession can be distinguished. First - initial period- from hatching to departure from the nest. This is a period of imprinting parents and environment. Second - active period when the fledglings leave the nest, they learn to fly and follow their parents, obeying their signals. It is during this active period that a huge number of conditioned reflexes are formed in the chicks and the main features of the behavior of an adult bird are formed. At the same time, parents, of course, unconsciously, often act according to certain programs.
Thus, the brood of the great grebe, leaving the nest, alternates swimming and diving in the water with heating on the back of the parents. The bird drops the chicks into the water and regulates the time of their swimming, preventing them from returning to their back. As the chicks grow, the adult bird increases the time they spend in the water.
B.P. Manteuffel (1980) observed how a male great tit trained his flying chicks to maneuver as follows. He took a piece of food in the experimental feeder and, flying up to the chicks sitting on a branch, sat down near, and then flew away, maneuvering between the branches, the whole flock of chicks flew after him. After some time, the male sat on a branch and gave a piece to the first flying chick. This was repeated many times. The female great spotted woodpecker, taking a piece of bread from the same feeder, flew accompanied by the chick to her "forge", inserted a piece there and flew off to the side, as if teaching the chick to use the "forge". There are many such examples.
Many features in the behavior of birds that are included in the "species stereotype of their behavior" are formed in ontogeny based on mediated learning and signal continuity. This was well illustrated by the example of singing and some acoustic signals of birds, which in nature have a certain species stereotype. So, the observations of A. Promptov and E. Lukina showed that in passerine birds, which are distinguished by a simplified song, for example: greenfinch, common bunting, forest pipit, etc., the normal formation of a song occurs without influence from the "teacher". However, in most species of birds with more complex song, it cannot develop without imitating the song of adult males of their species. For the formation of normal singing, it is necessary that the chick from the first days of life has the opportunity to hear the male singing nearby. In fosterlings raised in isolation, abortive singing is formed, sometimes quite different from the song of individuals of their own species. In the absence of singing males nearby, juvenile chirping persists for a long time - up to three years.
K.A. Vilks and E.K. Vilks (1958) held a huge and extraordinary interesting work on the mass shifting of eggs and chicks of some bird species into the nests of other species. As a result of this work, it turned out that in a number of cases, the male chicks later turned out, as it were, "behavioral hybrids", morphologically they had all the features of their main parents, and their songs corresponded to the songs of the adoptive parents. So, some pied flycatchers sang like redstarts, others like great tits, and still others like rattlesnakes. Although in nature these chicks, both in the nesting and post-nesting periods, had the opportunity to hear the songs of many birds (including birds of their own species), they imitated, as a rule, only foster parents. Thus, imitation is decisive in the formation of the songs of the studied songbirds. This process occurs mainly after the young bird leaves the nest, i.e. during the active period of signaling continuity. The song formed in the first year does not change in subsequent years.
Local bird songs different regions are the result of learning and creating local acoustic family lines. So, lovers of bird singing are widely known Kursk, Oryol and Voronezh nightingales.
Signaling continuity in mammals is developed to no lesser extent. It, like in birds, begins with imprinting and following reactions. Parental training of young has been described for many species. These are otters, wolves, bears, dolphins, etc.
Indirect learning is also of great biological importance for sexual and maternal behavior.

Conditioned reflexes are complex adaptive reactions of the body, carried out by the higher parts of the central nervous system by forming a temporary connection between the signal stimulus and the unconditional reflex act that reinforces this stimulus. Based on the analysis of the patterns of formation of conditioned reflexes, the school created the doctrine of higher nervous activity(cm.). Unlike unconditioned reflexes (see), which ensure the body's adaptation to constant influences external environment, conditioned reflexes enable the body to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Conditioned reflexes are formed on the basis of unconditioned reflexes, which requires the coincidence in time of some stimulus from the external environment (conditioned stimulus) with the implementation of one or another unconditioned reflex. The conditioned stimulus becomes a signal of a dangerous or favorable situation, enabling the body to respond with an adaptive reaction.

Conditioned reflexes are unstable and are acquired in the process individual development organism. Conditioned reflexes are divided into natural and artificial. The first arise in response to natural stimuli in vivo existence: a puppy that has received meat for the first time sniffs it for a long time and timidly eats it, and this act of eating is accompanied. In the future, only the sight and smell of meat causes the puppy to lick and excrete. Artificial conditioned reflexes are developed in an experimental setting, when the conditioned stimulus for the animal is an impact that is not related to unconditioned reactions in the natural habitat of animals (for example, flashing light, the sound of a metronome, sound clicks).

Conditioned reflexes are divided into food, defensive, sexual, indicative, depending on the unconditioned reaction reinforcing the conditioned stimulus. Conditioned reflexes can be named depending on the recorded response of the body: motor, secretory, vegetative, excretory, and can also be designated by the type of conditioned stimulus - light, sound, etc.

For the development of conditioned reflexes in an experiment, a number of conditions are necessary: ​​1) the conditioned stimulus must always precede the unconditioned stimulus in time; 2) the conditioned stimulus should not be strong so as not to cause its own reaction of the organism; 3) as a conditional stimulus is taken, usually found in the surrounding conditions of the habitat of a given animal or person; 4) the animal or person must be healthy, vigorous and have sufficient motivation (see).

There are also conditioned reflexes of various orders. When a conditioned stimulus is reinforced with an unconditioned stimulus, a first-order conditioned reflex is developed. If some stimulus is reinforced by a conditioned stimulus, to which a conditioned reflex has already been developed, then a second-order conditioned reflex is developed to the first stimulus. Conditioned reflexes of higher orders are developed with difficulty, which depends on the level of organization of a living organism.

In a dog, it is possible to develop conditioned reflexes up to 5-6 orders, in a monkey - up to 10-12 orders, in a person - up to 50-100 orders.

The works of I. P. Pavlov and his students established that the leading role in the mechanism of the occurrence of conditioned reflexes belongs to the formation of a functional connection between the centers of excitation from conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. An important role was assigned to the cerebral cortex, where the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, creating foci of excitation, began to interact with each other, creating temporary connections. Later, using electrophysiological research methods, it was found that the interaction between conditioned and unconditioned excitations can first occur at the level of the subcortical structures of the brain, and at the level of the cerebral cortex, the formation of an integral conditioned reflex activity is carried out.

However, the cerebral cortex always keeps the activity of subcortical formations under control.

Studies of the activity of single neurons of the central nervous system by the microelectrode method showed that both conditioned and unconditioned excitations (sensory-biological convergence) come to one neuron. It is especially pronounced in the neurons of the cerebral cortex. These data made it necessary to abandon the idea of ​​the presence of foci of conditioned and unconditioned excitation in the cerebral cortex and create the theory of convergent closure of the conditioned reflex. According to this theory, the temporal connection between conditioned and unconditioned excitation arises in the form of a chain of biochemical reactions in the protoplasm nerve cell cerebral cortex.

Modern ideas about conditioned reflexes have been significantly expanded and deepened due to the study of the higher nervous activity of animals in the conditions of their free natural behavior. It has been established that the environment, along with the time factor, plays an important role in the behavior of the animal. Any stimulus from the external environment can become conditional, allowing the body to adapt to environmental conditions. As a result of the formation of conditioned reflexes, the body reacts some time before exposure to an unconditioned stimulus. Consequently, conditioned reflexes contribute to the successful finding of food by animals, help to avoid danger in advance and most perfectly navigate in the changing conditions of existence.

Depending on the characteristics of the responses, the nature of the stimuli, the conditions for their application and reinforcement, etc., various types of conditioned reflexes are distinguished. These types are classified based on various criteria, in accordance with the tasks. Some of these classifications are great importance, both in theoretical and practical terms, including in sports activities.

As well as unconditioned, conditioned reflexes can be divided according to the receptor and effector features and their biological significance.

According to the receptor basis, conditioned reflexes are divided into exteroceptive, interoceptive and proprioceptive. Conditioned reflexes are most easily formed when exteroreceptors are stimulated.

According to the effector basis, conditioned reflexes are divided into vegetative(the effector is internal organs) and somatomotor(skeletal muscle effector).

According to their biological significance, conditioned reflexes are divided into food, defensive, sexual, statokinetic and locomotor, as well as conditioned reflexes that maintain the constancy of the internal environment of the body(homeostasis).

However, a conditioned reflex can be formed not only to a conditioned signal that is simple in structure, but also to a complex stimulus - a combination of signals related to one or different sensory systems. Complex stimuli can act simultaneously and sequentially.

With a complex of active stimuli, signals come from several stimuli at the same time. For example, a conditioned food reflex can be caused by the simultaneous exposure to the smell, shape and color of the stimulus.

With a complex of sequentially acting stimuli, the first of them, for example, light, is replaced by a second, for example, sound (in the form of a high tone), then a third, for example, the sound of a metronome. Reinforcement follows only after the action of this whole complex.

The ability to respond to complex stimuli allows us to classify conditioned reflexes according to such an indicator as reflex order . For example, a dog has developed a strong salivary conditioned reflex to the light of a light bulb. Such a reflex is called a reflex of the first order. In the future, a new conditioned signal (the sound of a bell) is used, which is reinforced not by an unconditioned stimulus, but by the already used conditioned one - the light of a light bulb. After several such combinations, it becomes a signal for the separation of saliva. This means that a second-order conditioned reflex has formed.

The most important form of conditioned reflexes are higher order reflexes, which are formed on the basis of established conditioned reflexes. In dogs, it was possible to develop a conditioned reflex up to the third order, in monkeys up to the fourth, in children up to the sixth, in an adult, conditioned reflexes of the ninth order were described.

Sensory and operant conditioned reflexes. Each reflex contains afferent (sensory) and efferent (executive) components (links). In some cases, the formation of new conditioned reflexes can occur with the formation of only new sensory components, in others, with the formation of both components. As a result, conditioned reflexes can be of two types - sensory and operant (effector).

In sensory conditioned reactions (called Yu. Konorsky conditioned reflexes of the 1st kind), response acts are either inherited (food, defensive, orienting, sexual and other unconditioned reflexes), or previously well-fixed conditioned reflexes (conditioned reflexes of higher orders). Consequently, they are characterized by the formation of only the afferent part of the reflex, in which an indifferent stimulus turns into an active one. The response to the conditioned stimulus remains the same as with the unconditioned or previously well-developed conditioned stimulus. For example, during the development of a defensive conditioned reflex to smell in the central nervous system, connections are established between afferent cells that perceive irritation of the olfactory analyzer and the pain center. At the same time, the nature of the response conditional and unconditional reactions coincides. In both cases, salivation begins. Similarly, other sensory conditioned reactions are developed and manifested (in particular, defensive motor conditioned reflexes in the form of hand withdrawal, reinforced by pain stimulation, tendon, pupillary, blinking reflexes).

Conditioned reflexes of this kind cannot always sufficiently change the relationship of the organism with the environment and fully provide adequate adaptation, since new forms of the response reactions themselves are not organized in this case. A more adequate adaptation is ensured by the fact that animals and humans are able to radically change the nature of their effector reactions in their relationship with the environment.

Operant conditioned reflexes(according to the classification of Yu. Konorsky, reflexes of the 2nd kind) are characterized by a new (not inherited from ancestors or not previously available in an individually acquired fund) form of response. These reflexes are also called "instrumental", since different objects (tools) are used in their implementation. For example, an animal opens a latch on a door with a limb and takes out the food behind it. Since the formation of such reflexes creates a complex set of newly formed movements, these reflexes are also called "manipulative".

In the formation of the corresponding conditioned operant reflexes, the most important role belongs to the impulses coming from the motor apparatus. An elementary model of a conditioned operant reflex was observed at. development of a classical food conditioned reflex to passive paw flexion in a dog (Yu. Konorsky). Two types of conditioned reactions were revealed in the animal - conditioned reflex salivation in response to passive flexion of the paw (sensory conditioned reflex, or reflex of the 1st kind) and multiple active flexion of the limb, which was not only a signal, but also a way of obtaining food (operant conditioned reflex, or reflex of the 2nd kind).

In the formation of operant conditioned reactions, the most important role belongs to the feedback between the cells in the nerve centers of unconditioned or previously well-developed conditioned reflexes and the cells of the centers of the motor analyzer. This contributes high level excitability of motor centers, due to the flow of afferent impulses from the proprioreceptors of contracting muscles.

Thus, one of the conditions for the development of operant motor conditioned reflexes is the mandatory inclusion in the system of stimuli of an impulse that arose spontaneously or was caused by an active or passive movement. The formation of these reflexes depends on the nature of the reinforcing agent. Operant conditioned reflexes form the basis of motor skills. Contribute to their consolidation feedback, carried out through the proprioceptors of the muscles that perform the movement, and through the receptors of a number of other analyzers. Through this afferentation, the central nervous system signals the results of the movement.

The formation of new movements, i.e., not inherited from ancestors, is observed not only in humans, but also in animals. But for a person, this process is of particular importance, since almost all complex motor acts (in particular, physical exercises in various types sports) are formed precisely as a result of training.

Natural (natural) and artificial conditioned reflexes. It is easier to develop conditioned reflexes in response to influences that are ecologically close to the given animal. In this regard, conditioned reflexes are divided into natural and artificial.

Natural conditioned reflexes are developed to agents that, under natural conditions, act together with the stimulus that causes the unconditioned reflex (for example, the type of food, its smell, etc.).

An illustration of the regularities in the formation of natural conditioned reflexes are the experiments of I. S. Tsitovich. In these experiments, puppies of the same litter were kept on different diets: some were fed only meat, others only milk. In animals that were fed meat, the sight and smell of it already at a distance caused a conditioned food reaction with pronounced motor and secretory components. Puppies fed only milk for the first time reacted to meat only with an indicative reaction, sniffed it and turned away. However, even a single combination of the sight and smell of meat with food completely eliminated this "indifference". Puppies have developed a natural food conditioned reflex.

The formation of natural (natural) conditioned reflexes is also characteristic of humans. Natural conditioned reflexes are characterized by rapid development and great durability. They can be held for life in the absence of subsequent reinforcements. This is due to the fact that natural conditioned reflexes are of great biological importance, especially in the early stages of the body's adaptation to environment. It is the properties of the unconditioned stimulus itself (for example, the type and smell of food) that are the first signals that act on the body after birth.

But, since conditioned reflexes can also be developed to various indifferent signals (light, sound, smell, temperature changes, etc.), which in natural conditions do not have the properties of an irritant that causes an unconditioned reflex, then such reactions, in contrast to natural ones, are called artificial conditioned reflexes. For example, the smell of mint is not inherent in meat. However, if this smell is combined several times with feeding meat, then a conditioned reflex is formed: the smell of mint becomes a conditioned signal of food and begins to cause a salivary reaction without reinforcement.

Artificial conditioned reflexes are developed more slowly and fade faster when not reinforced.

An example of the development of conditioned reflexes to artificial stimuli can be the formation in a person of secretory and motor conditioned reflexes to signals in the form of the sound of a bell, metronome beats, strengthening or weakening the illumination of touching the skin, etc.

Positive and negative conditioned reflexes. Conditioned reflexes, in the dynamics of which the activity of the organism is manifested in the form of motor or secretory reactions, are called positive. Conditional reactions that are not accompanied by external motor and secretory effects due to their inhibition are classified as negative or inhibitory reflexes. In the process of adapting the organism to changing environmental conditions, both types of reflexes are of great importance. They are closely interrelated, since the manifestation of one type of activity is combined with the oppression of other types. For example, during defensive motor conditioned reflexes, conditioned food reactions are inhibited and vice versa. With a conditioned stimulus in the form of the command "Attention!" the activity of the muscles causing standing in a certain position and inhibition of other conditioned motor reactions that were carried out before this command (for example, walking, running) is called.

Such an important quality as discipline is always associated with a simultaneous combination of positive and negative (inhibitory) conditioned reflexes. For example, when performing certain physical exercises (diving into water from a tower, gymnastic somersaults, etc.), inhibition of the strongest negative defensive conditioned reflexes is required to suppress reactions of self-preservation and feelings of fear.

Cash and trace reflexes. As already noted, I.P. Pavlov determined that for the formation of a conditioned reflex, it is necessary that the conditioned signal begins to act before the unconditioned one. However, the interval between them, i.e., the degree of separation of the unconditioned stimulus from the conditioned signal, may be different.

Conditioned reflexes in which the conditioned signal precedes the unconditioned stimulus, but acts together with it (i.e., the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli act together for some time) are called in cash.(Fig. 2. A, B, C ). Depending on the duration of the delay of unconditional reinforcement from the beginning of the action of the conditioned signal, the available conditioned reflexes in animals are classified as coinciding (0.5 - 1 sec.), Short-delayed (3 - 5 sec.), Normal (10 - 30 sec.) and delayed ( over 1 minute).

At trace conditioned reflexes , the conditioned stimulus is reinforced after the termination of its action (Fig. 2. D, E, F) Between the fading focus of excitation in the cortex from an indifferent agent and the focus of excitation in the cortical representation of the reinforcing unconditioned or previously well-developed reflex, a temporary connection is formed.

Trace conditioned reflexes are formed during short (10-20 seconds) and long (late) delays (1-2 minutes or more). The group of trace conditioned reflexes includes, in particular, a reflex to time, which plays the role of the so-called "biological clock".

◄Fig. 2. Scheme of the combination of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli in time with present and trace stimuli.

Gray rectangles are the time of action of the conditioned stimulus:

The black rectangles are the duration of the action of the unconditioned stimulus.

Cash and trace conditioned reflexes with a long delay are complex shapes manifestations of higher nervous activity and are available only to animals with a sufficiently developed cerebral cortex. The development of such reflexes in dogs is associated with great difficulties. In humans, trace conditioned reflexes are formed easily.

Trace conditioned responses are of great importance in exercise. For example, in a gymnastic combination consisting of several elements, trace excitation in the cerebral cortex, caused by the action of the first phase of movement, serves as an irritant for programming the chain of all subsequent ones. Inside chain reaction each of the elements is a conditional signal for the transition to the next phase of movement.

CLASSIFICATION OF CONDITIONED REFLEXES

Conditioned reflexes are divided according to various criteria:

• according to biological significance: food, sexual, defensive, etc.;
• by the type of receptors that perceive the conditioned stimulus: exteroceptive, interoceptive and proprioceptive;
• by the nature of the response: motor, vascular, respiratory, indicative, cardiac, statokinetic, etc.;
• by complexity: simple and complex;
• in order of development of conditioned reflexes: first order, second, third, etc.

TYPES OF INHIBITION OF CONDITIONAL REFLEXES

The manifestation of complex conditioned reflex reactions that ensure the vital activity and adaptation of the organism to changing environmental conditions is possible only with a strictly balanced coordination of conditioned reflex mechanisms of regulation. This coordination is based on the simultaneous and coordinated excitation of some cortical nerve centers and the inhibition of others.

The biological significance of inhibition lies in the improvement of the necessary conditioned reflexes and in the disappearance of reflexes that have lost their necessity. Inhibition also protects the body from overexertion (protective inhibition).

All types of inhibition of conditioned reflexes are divided into two types: unconditioned (innate) and conditioned (acquired) inhibition. By finding the source of inhibition, unconditioned inhibition can be external, when the cause of inhibition is located outside the arc of the conditioned reflex, and internal. With internal inhibition, the source of inhibition is located inside the arc of the conditioned reflex.

Conditional inhibition can only be internal.

External unconditional inhibition of conditioned reflexes is manifested by a slowdown or complete cessation of conditioned reflex activity when a new stimulus arises that causes an orienting reaction. For example, if a dog has developed a conditioned salivary reflex to turn on a light bulb, then giving a sound signal when the light is turned on inhibits the previously developed salivation reflex.

There are two types of external braking - permanent brake and damping brake. Permanent brake - inhibition of the conditioned reflex by a one-time or reusable strong biological stimulus. So, if a dog has begun a conditioned reflex salivation at the sight of food, then a sudden strong sound irritation (thunder) causes a cessation of salivation. Burning brake - inhibition of the conditioned reflex by a repeatedly repeated stimulus with low biological significance. For example, if a fox's hole is not far from railway, then after a repeated sound stimulus (train noise), her orienting reaction to this sound fades.

Conditioned inhibition of conditioned reflexes is due to the development of an inhibitory reaction that suppresses a positive conditioned reflex. This type of inhibition is also called acquired.

Conditional inhibition is subdivided into four types: extinction, differential, conditional and retarded.

If a conditioned stimulus is not reinforced by an unconditioned stimulus for a long time, it loses its biological significance and develops in the cortex fading inhibition and the conditioned reflex disappears.

Differential braking due to the ability of the animal to distinguish between similar stimuli and respond to only one of them. So, if a dog develops a salivary reflex to the light of a 100 W light bulb and reinforces it with food, and uses other similar stimuli (80 or 120 W light bulbs) without reinforcement, then through certain time reflexes on them fade away and a reflex appears only to a reinforced signal (100 W). This type of inhibition allows animals to develop new vital skills.

If the action of a certain conditioned stimulus with an already formed conditioned reflex is accompanied by the action of some other stimulus and this combination is not reinforced by the action of the unconditioned stimulus, then the conditioned reflex to the action of the conditioned stimulus also disappears. This extinction of the conditioned reflex is called conditional brake. For example, an animal has a reflex to the light of a light bulb. In the case of the simultaneous use of the light and sound of the metronome for a certain time and not reinforcing it with giving food, after a while already one sound signal will inhibit the manifestation of a conditioned reflex to the light of a light bulb.

delayed braking develops when the reinforcement of the conditioned stimulus by the unconditioned stimulus is carried out with a large delay (by several minutes) in relation to the action of the conditioned stimulus.

important in animal life beyond, or protective, inhibition, which occupies an intermediate position between conditional and unconditional inhibition. This type of inhibition occurs when the conditioned or unconditioned stimulus is too strong, which contributes to the weakening or disappearance of conditioned reflex reactions.