Rats with lesions in anteromedial extrastriate cortex fail to learn a visuosomatic conditional response

The involvement of rat anteromedial extrastriate cortex (area AM, in the anterior portion of area 18b) in the integration of visual and somatic cues was assessed behaviorally. Following restricted bilateral lesions of selected cortical regions, rats were tested on their ability to retain or relearn a conditional visuosomatic discrimination task learned prior to surgery. Two compound, visuosomatic stimuli were used: white or black associated with either one of two degrees of roughness. The use of a guided-response procedure was essential for rats to learn this difficult conditional bimodal task. None of the 6 rats with lesions aimed at area AM retained the habit postoperatively. Four of these rats were incapable of relearning the task after 3 postoperative training series, and they had either extensive lesions of area AM or relatively small, symmetric damage of anterior portions of AM. The remaining two rats with lesions in area AM were able to relearn the task in the second postoperative training series, and their lesions either were restricted to posteromedial aspects of area AM or they involved asymmetric loci in anterior area AM. In contrast to rats with lesions of area AM, rats with lesions in visual cortex in areas 17 and 18a, or in auditory cortex in area 41, were able either to retain the task or to relearn in the first postoperative training series. These results indicate that the integrity of area AM appears necessary for rats to discriminate between pairs of compound stimuli that differ in brightness and roughness. The behavioural data point to the notion that this area might be involved in the integration of these types of visual and somatic stimuli. In addition, our finding that performance was largely unimpaired following extensive lesions of lateral extrastriate area supports previous reports indicating that medial and lateral extrastriate visual areas differ in function.