The contribution of the rat prelimbic-infralimbic areas to different forms of task switching.
The experiments examined the effects of prelimbic-infralimbic inactivation in rats on the acquisition and reversal learning of different discrimination tasks: 2- or 4-choice odor discrimination in Experiments 1 and 2, the shift from 2-choice odor discrimination to 2-choice place discrimination in Experiment 3, and the shift from 2-choice place to 2-choice odor discrimination in Experiment 4. Infusions of 2% bupivacaine did not impair performance in the odor discrimination tests. Prelimbic-infralimbic inactivation did not impair acquisition but did impair the shift from an odor to a place discrimination and vice versa. Analysis of the errors revealed that the deficit was due to perseveration of the previously learned strategy. The selective deficits observed in the odor-place tests suggest that the prelimbic-infralimbic areas enable behavioral flexibility when conditions demand inhibiting the use of one type of attribute information and learning a new type of attribute information.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA. mrago@uic.edu
Michael E
ME
Ragozzino
Jenna
J
Kim
Derrick
D
Hassert
Nancy
N
Minniti
Charlene
C
Kiang
D000818:Animals; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008032:Limbic System / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans