Lateral forebrain lesions affect pecking accuracy in the pigeon

Pigeons were trained to preferentially peck the centermost element of a concentric key array. When they had learned the task to a criterion the subjects received lesions of the lateral telencephalon. The ablation caused an unexpected performance improvement, proportionally more pecks being directed at the central key element. However, on closer analysis this result was interpreted as being the effect of a mandibular gape control loss rather than being due to an actual peck localization enhancement.