ROLE OF FRONTAL CORTEX IN PERFORMANCE OF A CONDITIONAL REACTION

Eight immature rhesus monkeys were trained on a number of visual discrimination tasks including a conditional reaction. Ablations were made in lateral frontal cortex of four animals and orbital cortex was ablated in the remaining four. The conditional reaction was found to be selectively impaired by lateral ablations. The impairment is discussed in terms of perseverative interference and a disturbance of attentional function. © 1969.