Dissociation of the Medial Prefrontal, Posterior Parietal, and Posterior Temporal Cortex for Spatial Navigation and Recognition Memory in the Rat

Rats with lesions of the medial prefrontal, posterior parietal,or posterior temporal cortex were tested in five spatial navigationtasks, which varied in egocentric or allocentric demands, avisual discrimination task, and two delayed nonmatching-to-sampletasks. Rats with prefrontal lesions were impaired at every spatialnavigation task, whereas rats with posterior parietal lesionshad selective spatial navigation impairments. Rats with prefrontallesions were also impaired at a visual delayed nonmatching-to-sampletask, as they were unable to learn the task, even with no delay.The results are consistent with the idea that the basic planof mammalian cortex includes prefrontal, posterior parietal,and posterior temporal regions, each of which have generallysimilar functions across mammalian taxa. There are, however,species-typical differences that reflect specific ecologicalpressures on the development of the different regions.