title: Triple dissociation of anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and medial frontal cortices on visual discrimination tasks using a touchscreen testing procedure for the rat.
abstract: Four experiments examined effects of quinolinic acid-induced lesions of the anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and medial frontal cortices on tests of visual discrimination learning, using a new "touchscreen" testing method for rats. Anterior cingulate cortex lesions impaired acquisition of an 8-pair concurrent discrimination task, whereas posterior cingulate cortex lesions facilitated learning but selectively impaired the late stages of acquisition of a visuospatial conditional discrimination. Medial frontal cortex lesions selectively impaired reversal learning when stimuli were difficult to discriminate; lesions of anterior and posterior cingulate cortex had no effect. These results suggest roles for the anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and medial frontal cortex in stimulus-reward learning, stimulus-response learning or response generation, and attention during learning, respectively.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, England.
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Bussey
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Muir
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Everitt
authors.forename: T W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Robbins
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009042:Motivation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012193:Reversal Learning / Q000502:physiology