Initial acquisition of visual discriminations following selective cortical lesions in cats

Split-brain adult cats with various visual cortex lesions were tested for their ability to acquire several pattern discriminations using monocular vision. Different lesions were made in the two hemispheres to control for possible individual differences in learning speed due to factors other than the lesion. Results indicated that removal of either areas 17, 17 + 18, 18 + 19, or 19 did not abolish the ability to learn pattern discriminations. However, when compared to control animals, lesioned animals learned more slowly the various discriminations, especially subjects having lesions in 18 + 19. These results tend to confirm the hypothesis that the integrity of individual visual cortical areas for the perception and discrimination of simple patterns is important but not essential.