Interaction of ventral and orbital prefrontal cortex with inferotemporal cortex in conditional visuomotor learning

Behav Neurosci. 2002 Aug;116(4):703-15.

Abstract

Five rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were trained to learn novel conditional visuomotor associations, to perform this task with familiar stimuli, and to perform a visual matching-to-sample task with the same familiar stimuli. Removal of the orbital and ventral prefrontal cortex (PFv+o) in 1 hemisphere and inferotemporal cortex (IT) in the other, thus completing a surgical disconnection of these 2 regions, yielded an impairment on all 3 tasks. Addition of a premotor cortex lesion to the hemisphere containing the PFv+o lesion did not worsen the impairments. The results indicate that PFv+o interacts with IT in both the learning and retention of conditional visuomotor associations. In addition to those associations, which might be considered lower order rules for choosing a response, frontotemporal interaction also appears to be important for higher order rules, such as those involved in the matching task.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Conditioning, Classical
  • Discrimination Learning*
  • Female
  • Frontal Lobe / physiology*
  • Macaca mulatta / physiology*
  • Male
  • Motor Skills
  • Prefrontal Cortex / physiology*
  • Temporal Lobe / physiology*
  • Visual Perception