title: Role of the parietal associative area of the cortex for "counting" behavior in dogs.
abstract: Experiments were performed on six dogs to study the effects of simultaneous and separate ablation of fields 5 and 7 of the parietal cortex on "counting" behavior. Dogs were trained to discriminate series of five sound clicks presented with variable interstimulus intervals from similar series consisting of three clicks. A food-related operant response (elevation of the right forepaw to place it on the feeder) was used to develop asymmetrical differentiation; the positive signal was a series of five clicks with variable interstimulus intervals and the negative (unreinforced) stimulus was a series of three clicks. Simultaneous bilateral ablation of fields 5 and 7 of the parietal cortex, like bilateral ablation only of field 5, produced profound impairment of differentiation lasting 2-3 months. Isolated bilateral ablation of field 7 produced no impairment of differentiation. These data led to the conclusion that field 5 of the parietal cortex is important for discriminating the numbers of sequential signals.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Varga
authors.forename: O G
authors.initials: OG
authors.lastname: Pavlova
authors.forename: V N
authors.initials: VN
authors.lastname: Mats
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology; D004285:Dogs; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology