Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 2: Biobehavioral Influences (1994)
Chapter: ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE CAT
1984; Siegel and Pott, 1988) to the lateral tegmental fields of the pons (Berntson, 1973).
Affective defense behavior was originally described by Hess and Brugger (1943). This form of attack behavior, in contract with predatory attack, is associated with noticeable affective signs such as piloerection, retraction of the ears, arching of the back, marked pupillary dilatation, vocalization, and unsheathing of the claws. This response can also be evoked under natural environmental conditions. Examples include the affective defense reactions that occur when a cat's territory is invaded by another animal, when a threatening stimulus is introduced into the cat's environment, or when a female cat perceives that its kittens are threatened by another animal. Furthermore, electrical or chemical stimulation applied at the appropriate forebrain or brain stem sites in a cat will elicit affective defense responses with its forepaw that are directed at a moving object such as an awake rat, cat, or experimenter. Although predatory attack requires the presence of a prey object for an attack response to occur, affective defense can be elicited in an impoverished environment.
It should be noted that affective defense behavior is explosive in nature, oftentimes directed at conspecifics; produces a powerful sympathoadrenal response; and thus may share common features with violent "episodic dyscontrol" behavior in the human. Affective defense reactions are generally elicited from sites located throughout the rostrocaudal extent of the medial preoptico-hypothalamus and dorsal aspect of the PAG (Wasman and Flynn, 1962; Fuchs et al., 1985a,b; Shaikh et al., 1987; Siegel and Pott, 1988).
ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE CAT
A number of basic research problems have been considered over the past several decades with respect to affective defense behavior and predatory attack in the cat. Due mainly to the pioneering efforts of John Flynn, a number of the basic properties associated with predatory attack have been clearly delineated. For example, one class of studies has provided an analysis of how selective components of the central nervous system linked to the expression of quiet biting attack interact with sensory stimuli to facilitate the occurrence of this response (MacDonnell and Flynn, 1966a,b; Bandler and Flynn, 1972). Another set of studies was directed at identifying the mechanisms that regulate motor control of the attack response. Such studies helped to produce a
