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Lesions of the prefrontal cortex produce an impairment in rats’ behaviour on a time-place learning task

University of British Columbia

This experiment examined the effect of medial prefrontal lesions on time-place learning in the rat. During the first phase, prior to lesioning, rats received training on an interval time-place task. Food was available on each of four levers for 3 consecutive minutes of a 12-min session. The levers provided food in the same sequence on all trials. Rats restricted the majority of their presses on each lever to the time in each session when it provided food and were able to anticipate when a lever was going to provide food. During the second phase half the rats received lesions that were restricted to the medial prefrontal cortex. Following these very restricted lesions, rats were impaired in timing of the intervals. They tended to continue pressing a lever after it stopped providing food (i.e., perseverated, as if their internal clock was running slow). The third phase involved changing the order in which the levers provided food. Lesions had no discernable effect on the rats' ability to learn the correct sequence of food availability. However, this change made the rats' timing impairment even more noticeable.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-08-06

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/11898

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace