Preoperative overtraining protects against form learning deficits after lateral occipital lesions in Galago...

Bushbabies (Galago senegalensis) trained on a form discrimination task in a two-choice apparatus prior to partial disruption of the central field representation of vision in striate cortex were found to be protected from postoperative deficit. These same animals were deficient in learning novel form discriminations. Pre- and postoperative tests of these subjects on discrimination of fine stripe patterns and of small food objects gave no evidence of reduced epicritic visual capacities. Results are discussed in terms of an interpretive role in form learning for areas of central field representation in primary visual cortex.