title: Prelimbic cortex specific lesions disrupt delayed-variable response tasks in the rat.
abstract: The role of the prelimbic cortex (PL) in rats was investigated with excitotoxic lesions. PL lesions altered the alternation scores in spontaneous and reinforced spatial delayed-alternation tasks. PL lesions induced a delay in conditioning under a temporal go/no-go alternation schedule but not under a continuous food-reinforcement schedule in a runway. PL lesions had no effect on the acquisition of a standard radial-arm-maze task nor on a fixed-goal location task but disrupted the acquisition of a variable-goal location task in a radial-arm maze. The present results indicate that PL lesions replicated most of the behavioral deficits obtained with larger prefrontal lesions. PL lesions disrupted the acquisition of delayed-variable response tasks while leaving unaffected fixed-response tasks. These results are discussed in relation with a working-memory, a response-selection, and an attentional hypothesis.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurobiologie de I'Apprentissage et de la Mémoire, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Delatour
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gisquet-Verrier
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008032:Limbic System / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology