title: Perirhinal cortex lesions impair feature-negative discrimination.
abstract: The role of the perirhinal cortex in inhibitory eyeblink conditioning was examined. In Experiment 1, rats were given lesions of the perirhinal cortex or control surgery and subsequently trained with a feature-negative discrimination procedure followed by summation and retardation tests for conditioned inhibition. Perirhinal cortex lesions impaired, but did not prevent acquisition of feature-negative discrimination. Results from the summation test showed that rats with perirhinal cortex lesions could not generalize feature-negative discrimination to a new stimulus. There were no group differences during the retardation test. Experiment 2 showed that lesions of the perirhinal cortex did not impair simple excitatory conditioning. Experiment 3 showed that perirhinal cortex lesions had no effect on acquisition of a simple tone-light discrimination. The results suggest that the perirhinal cortex plays a role in eyeblink conditioning when using discrimination procedures involving overlapping stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Campolattaro
authors.forename: John H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Freeman
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology; D003215:Conditioning, Eyelid / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D005793:Generalization, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans