Electrical Correlates of the Direction of Movement Elicited by Subcortical Stimulation

In the course of a study of motivating effects elicited in freely moving cats by stimulating different subcortical loci, it was a consistent finding that the stimulated and the contralateral sides of the hippocampus showed characteristically different patterns of electrical activity. More concretely, while in subsequent trials stimulation intensity was gradually increased, at a definite value a desynchronization in the ipsilateral hippocampus and theta waves in the contralateral hippocampus appeared simultaneously. Because this electrical asymmetry regularly coincided with contralateral turning of the animal, it was suggestive of a correlation between the direction of locomotion and the hemispheric localization of fast- and slow-wave electrical patterns.