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The effect of temporal, frontal and parietal lobe ablations on the maze behavior of cats

University of British Columbia

In the present investigation the effect on brightness discrimination of ablations of various parts of the cerebral cortex of cats has been examined. The background for this project lay in the work of Kluver and Bucy (1939) who observed "psychic blindness” in monkeys with bilateral temporal ablations and that of Chow, Blum and Blum (1951) and Riopelle, Alper, Strong and Ades (1953) who found no such loss of simple visual properties from similar ablations in monkeys. Since it is not possible to subject the cat to the complex experimental tests of the monkey, and since a rigorous control of the stimulus situation was desired, the present investigation deals with brightness discrimination only. It was found that bilateral ablations of the cerebral cortex had a deleterious effect on brightness discrimination. The specific test did not differentiate among the effects of ablations of the frontal, temporal and parietal association areas although the total post-operative behavior of the animals easily indicated the specific site of the lesions.

Text

2012-02-24

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/40918

Neuroscience

University of British Columbia

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