Explain how the classical conditioning of an eye blink came to be used as a diagnostic tool, and list the various conditions that have been diagnosed using it

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer will include that one exciting possibility is that eye blink conditioning may be useful for distinguishing locked-in individuals from those with more severe brain damage and even severely brain-damaged individuals who are minimally conscious from those who are in a vegetative state. Patients who are at least minimally conscious can be conditioned and may recover some mental functions, while patients in a vegetative state likely cannot be conditioned or recover. Currently, some minimally conscious patients are misdiagnosed and are not offered appropriate therapy. Eye blink conditioning may also help make earlier diagnoses. For example, psychologist Diana Woodruff-Pak noticed disordered eye blink conditioning in a patient six years before other tests showed any signs of dementia. Eventually, these people with dementia suffered major declines in memory, judgment, language, and thinking abilities. More clinical applications may be developed since the details of eye blink conditioning, including which brain areas are involved, are now fairly well understood. Psychologist Joseph Steinmetz and his colleagues found that people with autism show unusual eye blink conditioning. So do people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome, and schizophrenia. This relationship now gives doctors another way to diagnose such disorders as well as to learn more about them.