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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats
Published on: February 15, 2015
Dissociable components of rule-guided behavior depend on distinct medial and prefrontal regions
Mark J Buckley1, Farshad A Mansouri, Hassan Hoda
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK. buckley@psy.ox.ac.uk
Abstract:
Much of our behavior is guided by rules. Although human prefrontal cortex (PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are implicated in implementing rule-guided behavior, the crucial contributions made by different regions within these areas are not yet specified. In an attempt to bridge human neuropsychology and nonhuman primate neurophysiology, we report the effects of circumscribed lesions to macaque orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), principal sulcus (PS), superior dorsolateral PFC, ventrolateral PFC, or ACC sulcus, on separable cognitive components of a Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) analog. Only the PS lesions impaired maintenance of abstract rules in working memory; only the OFC lesions impaired rapid reward-based updating of representations of rule value; the ACC sulcus lesions impaired active reference to the value of recent choice-outcomes during rule-based decision-making.
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