Concurrent measurement of heart rate and instrumental avoidance behavior in the Rhesus monkey.

POLIDORNEVIN et al. (1963) built a simple circuit that lets a cumulative recorder draw both lever presses and heartbeats on the same paper. They wired an EKG trigger to the monkey’s shock-avoidance box. Every heartbeat advanced the pen one step, just like a bar press.

The paper shows photos of the wiring diagram and a sample record. No data on learning or heart-rate change are given—just the how-to.

The device worked. The cumulative pen moved with each R-wave while the second pen marked lever responses. Both events lined up on the same time scale, letting researchers see moment-to-moment overlap between behavior and physiology.

Dove et al. (1974) took the same idea and ran an experiment. They used heart-rate as the operant in pigeons and proved birds can raise or lower rate to match a tone frequency. The 1963 paper gave the tool; the 1974 paper showed what you can do with it.

Caggiano et al. (1967) built a different box—an electromechanical counter that sorted behavioral events into bins. Both papers are 1960s hardware notes that automate data capture, one for heartbeats and one for any lever or switch event.

Dukhayyil et al. (1973) also worked with monkeys, but they measured escape from shock instead of heart rate. Their new pain-detection lever task pairs nicely with the 1963 heart-rate setup; together you could ask whether heartbeats speed up exactly when the monkey first detects shock.

If you want to pair physiology with behavior without a computer, this circuit still works. A $5 trigger chip and a spare cumulative channel give you millisecond alignment of heartbeats and responses. Try it during your next avoidance session: wire the child’s pulse oximeter output to a data-logger channel. You may spot brief spikes that predict problem behavior seconds before the first hit or bite.