Delayed alternation behavior following ablations of the medial or dorsal prefrontal cortex in dogs

Medial, but nor dorsal, prefrontal ablations interfered with retention in a spatial delayed alternation task. In this problem, normal dogs showed systematic bodily orientations during the delays. It has been found previously that dorsal, but not medial, lesions produced deficits in other delayed response type tasks in which positional mediations were not used. Occurrence of impairment after a given lesion appeared to be related to whether or not the animal adopted a positional strategy for solving the task. It was suggested that the medial prefrontal cortex subserves responding to kinesthetic cues, while the dorsal cortex may have a function in behavior based on retained spatial stimuli. Comparisons were made between properties of prefrontal cortices in dog and monkey.