PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hunt, Peter R.
AU  - Aggleton, John P.
TI  - Neurotoxic Lesions of the Dorsomedial Thalamus Impair the Acquisition But Not the Performance of Delayed Matching to Place by Rats: a Deficit in Shifting Response Rules
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.18-23-10045.1998
DP  - 1998 Dec 01
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 10045--10052
VI  - 18
IP  - 23
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/18/23/10045.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/18/23/10045.full
SO  - J. Neurosci.1998 Dec 01; 18
AB  - This study examined the acquisition of a T-maze matching to place task by rats with neurotoxic lesions of the thalamic nucleus medialis dorsalis. This test of spatial working memory also entails learning a task rule that is contrary to the animals’ innate preference. The rats next performed the same matching task over different retention delays. Finally, they were trained on a reversal of the task rule, i.e., to nonmatch to place. Although the lesions produced a clear acquisition impairment on the matching task, there was no evidence of a loss of working memory. A series of control tasks found no appreciable effect on a conditioned cue preference task or on open field activity. The pattern of results shows that medialis dorsalis lesions lead to a selective increase in perseverative behavior that can retard task acquisition. This perseverative deficit closely resembles that observed after prefrontal damage in rats, strongly indicating dysfunction in a common system.