Nelson Andrew J D, Hindley Emma L, Haddon Josephine E, Vann Seralynne D, Aggleton John P
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, United Kingdom.
Learn Mem. 2014 Jan 16;21(2):90-7. doi: 10.1101/lm.032136.113.
By virtue of its frontal and hippocampal connections, the retrosplenial cortex is uniquely placed to support cognition. Here, we tested whether the retrosplenial cortex is required for frontal tasks analogous to the Stroop Test, i.e., for the ability to select between conflicting responses and inhibit responding to task-irrelevant cues. Rats first acquired two instrumental conditional discriminations, one auditory and one visual, set in two distinct contexts. As a result, rats were rewarded for pressing either the right or left lever when a particular auditory or visual signal was present. In extinction, rats received compound stimuli that either comprised the auditory and visual elements that signaled the same lever response (congruent) or signaled different lever responses (incongruent) during training. On conflict (incongruent) trials, lever selection by sham-operated animals followed the stimulus element that had previously been trained in that same test context, whereas animals with retrosplenial cortex lesions failed to disambiguate the conflicting response cues. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that this abnormality on conflict trials was not due to a failure in distinguishing the contexts. Rather, these data reveal the selective involvement of the rat retrosplenial cortex in response conflict, and so extend the frontal system underlying cognitive control.
凭借其与额叶和海马体的连接，压后皮质在支持认知方面具有独特的地位。在此，我们测试了在类似于斯特鲁普测验的额叶任务中，即选择相互冲突的反应并抑制对与任务无关线索的反应的能力，是否需要压后皮质。大鼠首先在两种不同情境中习得两种工具性条件辨别任务，一种是听觉的，一种是视觉的。结果，当出现特定听觉或视觉信号时，大鼠按压右侧或左侧杠杆会得到奖励。在消退阶段，大鼠接受复合刺激，这些复合刺激要么包含在训练中指示相同杠杆反应的听觉和视觉元素（一致），要么指示不同杠杆反应（不一致）。在冲突（不一致）试验中，假手术动物的杠杆选择遵循先前在同一测试情境中训练过的刺激元素，而压后皮质损伤的动物无法区分相互冲突的反应线索。后续实验表明，冲突试验中的这种异常并非由于区分情境失败所致。相反，这些数据揭示了大鼠压后皮质在反应冲突中的选择性参与，从而扩展了认知控制的额叶系统。
