Elsevier

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 9, Issue 4, October 1972, Pages 637-641
Physiology & Behavior

Involvement of gustatory neocortex in the learning of taste aversions

https://doi.org/10.1016/0031-9384(72)90023-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Compared to a normal control group, rats lacking anterolateral neocortex were markedly deficient in their ability to associate a saccharin stimulus with drug-induced illness, yet saccharin clearly was shown to be detectable (preferred to water) by lesioned rats at the testing concentration. Both normal and lesioned rats were able to associate readily a quinine cue with illness, and rats with medial neocortex lesions appeared normal when the saccharin stimulus was used. It is argued that the described deficit is an associative one related specifically both to lesions of anterolateral neocortex and to some feature of the saccharin stimulus used in this study.

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Supported by NIH grant NS08658. We thank Geoffrey Nowlis and Edwin Rubel for reviewing the preliminary manuscript, and Harris McIntosh Jr. for technical assistance.

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