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Perirhinal cortex lesions impair feature-negative discrimination
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Perirhinal cortex lesions impair feature-negative discrimination

Matthew M CAMPOLATTARO and John H FREEMAN
Neurobiology of learning and memory, Vol.86(2), pp.205-213
2006
DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2006.03.001
PMCID: PMC2556371
PMID: 16617027
url
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2006.03.001View
Open Access

Abstract

The role of the perirhinal cortex in inhibitory eyeblink conditioning was examined. In Experiment 1, rats were given lesions of the perirhinal cortex or control surgery and subsequently trained with a feature-negative discrimination procedure followed by summation and retardation tests for conditioned inhibition. Perirhinal cortex lesions impaired, but did not prevent acquisition of feature-negative discrimination. Results from the summation test showed that rats with perirhinal cortex lesions could not generalize feature-negative discrimination to a new stimulus. There were no group differences during the retardation test. Experiment 2 showed that lesions of the perirhinal cortex did not impair simple excitatory conditioning. Experiment 3 showed that perirhinal cortex lesions had no effect on acquisition of a simple tone-light discrimination. The results suggest that the perirhinal cortex plays a role in eyeblink conditioning when using discrimination procedures involving overlapping stimuli.
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Biological and medical sciences Behavioral psychophysiology Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology

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