Abstract

This study is concerned with the question whether the prelimbic area and anterior cingulater cortes of the rat is important subtrates in the spatial localization task and visually-cued task with Morris water maze. In the spatial localization tasks, with the invisible platform, rats with either prelimbic area or anterior cingulate cortex lesions were subjected to spatial reference memory task, tranfer test and then spatial working memory task. Animals with prelimbic area lesion learned and remembered the spatial task equally as well as their controls. However Animals with anterior cingulater cortex lesion were initially slower in localizing the invisible platform than controls in the spatial reference and the spatial working memory tasks but the impairments were transient. In the visually-cued task with visible platform, animals with prelimbic area lesion showed a transient impairment but animals with cingulate cortex lesion no impairment. Their results were interpreted as showing that prelimbic area may be involved in the attentional control and anterior cingulate cortex in the learning of rules and response reorganization in a new and challenging situation.