Medial prefrontal lesion deficits involving or sparing the prelimbic area in the rat

The rat medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) is believed to play a central role in working memory and selective attention processes. More recently, it has been shown that the effects of large PFC lesions on working memory may be due to the prelimbic area of the PFC. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of lesions of the prelimbic area with PFC lesions that involved or spared the prelimbic area on shuttlebox avoidance and radial maze learning in rats. The findings indicate that rats with PFC lesions that spared the prelimbic area were impaired at avoidance but not radial arm maze learning, whereas rats with prelimbic lesions or PFC lesions that included this area were impaired on the radial arm maze but not the avoidance learning task. Results support the notion that the medial frontal cortex of the rat is a functionally dissociable region and suggest that the prelimbic area appears to be critical for working memory, but less so for attention processes.