Minimal impairment in a rat model of duration discrimination following excitotoxic lesions of primary auditory and prefrontal cortices

Pai, S., Erlich, J. C., Kopec, C., Brody, C. D. (September 2011) Minimal impairment in a rat model of duration discrimination following excitotoxic lesions of primary auditory and prefrontal cortices. Front Syst Neurosci, 5 (74). ISSN 1662-5137

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Abstract

We present a behavioral paradigm for the study of duration perception in the rat, and report the result of neurotoxic lesions that have the goal of identifying sites that mediate duration perception. Using a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, rats were either trained to discriminate durations of pure tones (range = [200,500] ms; boundary = 316 ms; Weber fraction after training = 0.24 +/- 0.04), or were trained to discriminate frequencies of pure tones (range = [8,16] kHz; boundary = 11.3 kHz; Weber = 0.16 +/- 0.11); the latter task is a control for non-timing-specific aspects of the former. Both groups discriminate the same class of sensory stimuli, use the same motions to indicate decisions, have identical trial structures, and are trained to psychophysical threshold; the tasks are thus matched in a number of sensorimotor and cognitive demands. We made neurotoxic lesions of candidate timing-perception areas in the cerebral cortex of both groups. Following extensive bilateral lesions of the auditory cortex, the performance of the frequency discrimination group was significantly more impaired than that of the duration discrimination group. We also found that extensive bilateral lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex resulted in little to no impairment of both groups. The behavioral framework presented here provides an audition-based approach to study the neural mechanisms of time estimation and memory for durations.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: organism description > animal
organism description > animal behavior
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > tissues types and functions > auditory cortex
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > tissues types and functions > cerebral cortex
organism description > animal > mammal
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions
organism description > animal > mammal > rodent > rat
organism description > animal > mammal > rodent > rat
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > tissues types and functions
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Zador lab
School of Biological Sciences > Publications
Depositing User: Matt Covey
Date: 27 September 2011
Date Deposited: 05 Feb 2013 21:32
Last Modified: 22 Sep 2014 20:09
PMCID: PMC3180561
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/27186

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