Triple dissociation of anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and medial frontal cortices on visual discrimination tasks using a touchscreen testing procedure for the rat

Behav Neurosci. 1997 Oct;111(5):920-36. doi: 10.1037//0735-7044.111.5.920.

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.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Association Learning / physiology
  • Attention / physiology
  • Brain Mapping
  • Conditioning, Classical / physiology*
  • Discrimination Learning / physiology
  • Emotions / physiology*
  • Frontal Lobe / physiology*
  • Gyrus Cinguli / physiology*
  • Male
  • Mental Recall / physiology
  • Motivation*
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual / physiology*
  • Psychomotor Performance / physiology*
  • Rats
  • Reaction Time / physiology
  • Reversal Learning / physiology