The effects of perirhinal cortical lesions on spatial reference memory in the rat

Rats with bilateral, electrolytic lesions of the perirhinal cortex and sham operated control rats were tested in the Morris water maze, a procedure which has repeatedly been shown to be sensitive to hippocampal and limbic system dysfunction. The results of the present study demonstrate that perirhinal lesioned rats were mildly impaired on this task. The lesioned animals took significantly longer than controls to locate the hidden platform during place navigation acquisition, and had significantly larger heading errors across the entire experimental procedure. In addition, these lesioned animals made fewer platform crossings than control rats during the probe trials. These results suggest that the perirhinal cortex, like the anatomically related entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, may be involved in mnemonic processing.