Preserved stimulus-reward and reversal learning after selective neonatal orbital frontal areas 11/13 or amygdala lesions in monkeys.

ABSTRACT: Neither lesions of orbital frontal (OFC) areas 11/13 nor selective amygdala lesions alter the ability to learn stimulus-reinforcer association and reversal discriminations in adult monkeys. Here, we investigated whether the same conclusion will hold true when the same lesions occur in infancy. Infant rhesus monkeys received sham-operations, neurotoxic amygdala lesions, or aspiration OFC 11/13 lesions at 8-15 days of age and were trained on object discrimination reversal (ODR) tasks. Performance on a single pair (1-Pair) ODR was assessed at the age of 3 months and 3 years, and then animals were tested in a 5-Pair ODR task in which they had to concurrently learn and reverse five discrimination problems. The results indicated that the ability to solve a single-pair discrimination problem foll

SUBMITTER: Kazama AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3369024 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature