Effects of lateral suprasylvian visual cortex lesions on visual localization, discrimination, and attention in cats

Experiments were carried out to begin to define the behavioral functions of the lateral suprasylvian (LS) visual area of the cat's cortex. Behavioral tasks were chosen for analysis on the basis of previous suggestions in the literature concerning possible functions of LS cortex and its afferent pathways. These tasks included the ability of cats to orient the head and eyes to a stimulus presented in particular locations in the visual field, the ability to learn successive reversals of a two-choice visual pattern discrimination, and the ability to maintain or shift attention between relevant or irrelevant visual form and brightness cues. Eight cats were trained on each of these tasks. Four of the cats then received bilateral lesions of LS cortex, including the AMLS and PMLS regions, and the remaining 4 cats were used to assess normal retention. The LS cortex lesions had no significant effect upon performance of any of the behaviors tested. Thus, this region of cortex appears to play no essential role in simple brightness, form, and pattern discrimination performance, visual reversal learning, maintaining and shifting visual attention, or orienting the head and eyes to stimuli in the visual field. These results are discussed in relation to previous lesion studies involving large regions of the cat's extrastriate cortex and studies in other species. Possible functions of LS cortex, based upon recent electrophysiological studies, are suggested.