Abstract

Yun et al.(1999) investigated the role of prelimbic area(PL) and anterior cingulate cortex(ACC) of medial prefrontal cortex using two delayed spatial win-shift(SWS) tasks and a single phase random foraging task on an 8-arm radial maze. Delayed SWS task consisted of a training and a testing phase separated by a delay period(5 min. in the 1st task, and 30min. in the 2nd task). PL-lesioned animals learned all the 3 tasks as well as the control animals. However ACC-lesioned animals revisited previously baited arms in the training and test phase. In this study subjects were also overtrained by using the same delayed SWS tasks and then they were trained in a new visual cueing task for 8 sessions. In the new task, PL-lesioned animals showed impairment in the 3rd session but it lasted transiently. ACC-lesioned animals showed impairment at the 3th, 4th, 5th, 6th session. These results were interpreted that PL is involved in attention control or strategy shift, and ACC involved in the reorganization of information in a new and challenging situation.