加西亚(1917-1986),
美国生理心理学家,以研究大鼠在内脏性有害刺激的作用下,对食物的嗅觉或味觉刺激形成长延迟的厌恶条件反应而闻名。1979年获美国心理学会颁发的杰出科学贡献奖,1983年当选为国家科学院院士。
John Garcia is Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Los
Angeles. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983. He
has over 130 publications. He was awarded the Howard Crosby Warren Medal
for Outstanding Research in 1978 from the Society of Experimental
Psychologists. In 1979 the American Psychological Association awarded
him the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.
Garcia is best know for the "Garcia Effect," or the study of taste
aversion conditioning. One of Garcia's most interesting papers was
entitled "Bright Noisy Water." Rats will readily associate taste, but
not visual or auditory cues with nausea. Significantly, and this is
still a contemporary memory problem, the taste can be separated from the
nausea by hours. Where is the memory of the taste held in the brain?
Taste aversion conditioning can be induced even when an animal is
unconscious. John's research traced out the basic unconditioned response
pathway. Neural information arrives at the nucleus tractus solitarius to
combine with information about toxins in blood sensed at the area
postrema. This information ascends to the amygdala, which is necessary
for taste aversion conditioning to occur, and is influenced by
descending information from the gustatory neocortex.
Garcia's work has applied significance in protecting lambs and calves
from predation by coyotes and wolves. For example, if sheep meat is
laced with LiCl and covered with sheep skin and salted in areas where
coyotes hunt, then the coyotes will eat the tainted sheep, become sick,
and not wish to eat another sheep for a long time in the future.
http://www.andp.org/activities/garcia.htm