Ever since I got into operant conditioning now over a good dozen years ago, I was aware that there was a researcher in New York studying operant learning in rats in a very unusual experimental setup. His lab triggers the well-known stretch reflex (the one you know from your doctor when he hits your knee with a rubber hammer) and then rewards animals which react either with a higher than average (up-conditioning) or lower than average (down conditioning) muscle contraction. After a number of trials, the animals consistently produce large or small contractions, where before training they varied widely.
For all these years I've been aware of this work and at the various SfN meetings have been walking by his posters hoping to spot his name on one of the badges around the posters. Well, yesterday I finally got to meet Dr. Wolpaw. It was a short but very exciting meeting where we immediately realized to how similar conclusions and interpretations our vastly different research studies had led us. He finds that the variability in the stretch reflex comes from cortical control centers injecting the variability via the cortico-spinal tract. This was very reminiscent of the way we interpreted our finding that there is always the same mathematical signature in the temporal structure of fly turning behavior, irrespective of whether the behavior was spontaneous or elicited. So despite the behavior being triggered and executed by the spinal cord, the cortex is critically involved in the conditioning process and so far it seems as if the way this is happening may indeed follow the same basic principles found in many other vertebrate and invertebrate preparations.
This was a very memorable first day at this year's conference for me! Hopefully, we'll stay in touch and keep exchanging ideas in the future.