Effects on executive function following damage to the prefrontal cortex in the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta).

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 123(3) of Behavioral Neuroscience (see record 2009-07961-027). There was an error in the first sentence of the third full paragraph in the text on p. 235. The sentence should read “Based on the lesion reconstructions it was determined, as intended, that all monkeys had complete damage to areas 46, 8a, 8b, 9 and slight damage to area 10.”] Executive function is a term used to describe the cognitive processes subserved by the prefrontal cortex (PFC). An extensive body of work has characterized the effects of damage to the PFC in nonhuman primates, but it has focused primarily on the capacity of recognition and working memory. One limitation in studies of the functional parcellation of the PFC has been the absence of tests that assess executive function or its functional components. The current study used an adaptation of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, a classic test of frontal lobe and executive function in humans, to assess the effects of bilateral lesions in the dorsolateral PFC on executive function in the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta). The authors used the category set-shifting task, which requires the monkey to establish a pattern of responding to a specific category (color or shape) based on reward contingency, maintain that pattern of responding, and then shift to responding to a different category when the reward contingency changes. Rhesus monkeys with lesions of the dorsolateral PFC were impaired in abstraction, establishing a response pattern to a specific category and maintaining and shifting that response pattern on the category set-shifting task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)