Dorsolateral Frontal Lesions Research Articles

The effects of inferior temporal and dorsolateral frontal lesions on serial-order behavior and visual imagery in monkeys

Four monkeys were trained preoperatively on a serial-order task to respond to a set of five visual stimuli in a fixed sequence independent of their location. They were then given a test of visual imagery in which only two of the five stimuli appeared at a time, and the animals were required to respond to them in the order in which they appeared in the original sequence. The monkeys then received bilateral lesions of either inferior temporal cortex or dorsolateral frontal cortex. Dorsolateral frontal lesions had no effect on either serial-order behavior or visual imagery. In contrast, inferior temporal lesions severely impaired serial-order behavior. Once the serial-order task was relearned, however, the inferior temporal animals were completely normal on the test of visual imagery.

Depression in patients with acute traumatic brain injury.

This study was undertaken to examine patients with closed head injuries for the presence of depressive disorders. A consecutive series of 66 patients with closed head injuries but no significant spinal cord or other organ system injury were examined by means of a semistructured psychiatric interview. The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression as well as scales measuring impairment in activities of daily living, intellectual functioning, and social functioning were administered. The patients' CT scans were also examined. Seventeen patients had major depression and two had minor depression. The presence of left dorsolateral frontal lesions and/or left basal ganglia lesions and, to a lesser extent, parietal-occipital and right hemisphere lesions was associated with an increased probability of developing major depression. Compared to the nondepressed group, the group with major depression had a higher frequency of previous psychiatric disorder and showed evidence of poorer social functioning. Major depression occurs in about one-quarter of patients after traumatic brain injury. This is the same frequency as in other major disorders such as stroke. Major depression appears to be provoked by one or more factors that include poor premorbid social functioning and previous psychiatric disorder or injury to certain critical brain locations.

Severe disturbance of higher cognition after bilateral frontal lobe ablation: Patient EVR

After bilateral ablation of orbital and lower mesial frontal cortices, a patient had profound changes of behavior that have remained stable for 8 years. Although he could not meet personal and professional responsibilities, his “measurable” intelligence was superior, and he was therefore considered a “malingerer.” Neurologic and neuropsychological examinations were otherwise intact. CT, MRI, and SPET revealed a localized lesion of the orbital and lower mesial frontal cortices. All other cerebral areas had normal structure and radioactivity patterns. Such impairments of motivation and complex social behavior were not seen in control cases with superior mesial or dorsolateral frontal lesions.

Neurolinguistic analysis of verbal utterances in patients with focal lesions of frontal lobes

Verbal utterances of 105 patients have been analyzed. Six groups of subjects were examined including patients with left dorsolateral frontal lesions, left orbitofrontal lesions, right frontal lobe lesions, posterior aphasics, posterior brain-damaged patients without aphasia, and a matched control group. Results indicate that the left frontal lobe is involved in organization of linguistic information. Its dorsolateral part seems to be concerned with forming the sequential pattern of an utterance, and the orbital part with the directed development of a narrative. It is conceivable that the right frontal lobe is important for the global, nonlinguistic organization of information to be uttered.

Performance under temporal schedules by monkeys with partial ablations of prefrontal cortex

Three groups of three monkeys (normal controls and monkeys with ablations confined to orbitofrontal or dorsolateral frontal cortex) were trained to lever press for food reinforcement under a fixed-interval schedule. Monkeys with orbital lesions, and only those monkeys, showed significantly elevated response rates and little evidence of response patterning. Neither acquisition nor asymptotic performance under a second temporal schedule, differential-reinforcement-of-low-rates, was abnormal for either these orbital frontal monkeys or monkeys with dorsolateral frontal lesions. Rate of response declined equally rapidly for all groups when this schedule was changed to extinction but orbitals failed to display the accompanying shift toward longer interresponse times shown by the controls. These findings confirm the functional independence of dorsolateral and orbital frontal cortex. They also suggest that characterizing the behavioral changes following orbital lesions as either perseveration or disinhibition is not entirely accurate. An explanation emphasing alternation between two incompatible behaviors is offered as an improvement.

Changes in relative frequencies of behaviors in pigtail monkeys (Macaca nemistrina) following dorsolateral frontal ablations.

2 pigtail monkeys with dorsolateral frontal lesions and 2 control Ss were observed pre- and postoperatively in social and isolation conditions. Behavior was exhaustively classified into 10 discrete categories. In both observation situations the distribution of behavior was consistent over time for controls. In the social observation condition, however, frontals increased slow locomotion and decreased behaviors involving visual stimulation. No changes in behavior patterns were produced by the isolation condition.

Effects of dorsolateral frontal lesions on responsiveness to various stimulus parameters in the pigtail monkey

We investigated the model of frontal lobe functioning which emphasizes attention and stimulus processing rather than the traditional learning and memory model. The first experiment investigated conditional discrimination and responsiveness to novel cues. Animals were trained on a sign-differentiated position discrimination. Those with dorsolateral frontal lesions were greatly impaired relative to controls. Half the controls were overtrained so they received as many exposures to the stimuli as those with frontal lesions and half were trained only to criterion. All animals then received preference trials where novel stimuli were paired with training stimuli. Both the animals with lesions and the nonovertrained controls chose novel stimuli more than overtrained controls, even though the former had been exposed to the training stimuli as much as the overtrained controls. Monkeys with frontal lesions had difficulty using spatial cues in the training part of the study and appeared to be overresponsive to novel stimuli during the preference testing. The second experiment utilized a reversal and nonreversal shift paradigm opposing size and form cues in each type of problem. Monkeys with frontal lesions were slightly, but not significantly impaired relative to controls. Contrary to the findings of previous studies of normal monkeys, reversal shifs were significantly more difficult to learn than nonreversal shifts.

Detection of masked patterns in monkeys with inferotemporal, striate or dorsolateral frontal lesions

Monkeys with lateral striate (LS) lesions, inferotemporal (IT) lesions or dorsolateral frontal (DLF) lesions were trained to discriminate between two visual patterns before and after the patterns were masked with irrelevant stimuli (rings enclosing the patterns). Compared to the DLF monkeys, the IT monkeys and one monkey with LS lesions were retarded in discriminating between the unmasked patterns. Irrespective of their performance with unmasked patterns, the IT and LS monkeys were impaired in discriminating the masked patterns, compared to the DLF monkeys. Analysis of performance in testing suggests that both LS and IT lesions produce an impairment in selective attention to visual stimuli.

Food preference in brain lesioned monkeys

Abstract The preference for five different foods has been tested in 38 monkeys, 27 with brain lesions and 11 unoperated controls. All groups demonstrated clear preferences, but there were variations between groups depending on the length of time in laboratory and the site of their brain injury. Normal monkeys with long laboratory experience showed less preference for laboratory chow than normal monkeys with short laboratory experience. Long-term monkeys with dorsolateral frontal lesions seemed to “perseverate” their chow preference. Orbito-frontal monkeys did not differ from normals with respect to chow preference, but selected raw meat. Meat choices were also observed among the monkeys with amygdala lesions, but not among normals or monkeys with other frontal or temporal-lobe lesions.

Perseveration in extinction and in discrimination reversal tasks following selective frontal ablations in Macaca mulatta

In order to determine whether the perseverative syndrome exhibited by monkeys with frontal lobe lesions can be fractionated by partial frontal lesions, monkeys with dorsolateral frontal lesions, those with orbital frontal lesions, and those with partial orbital lesions were tested in three tasks: extinction of a food rewarded bar pressing response, spatial discrimination reversals and object discrimination reversals. Perseveration of bar-pressing in extinction was selectively related to the posteromedial or “limbic” portion of orbital frontal cortex. Deficits in object discrimination reversal, on the other hand, were specifically associated with the lateral sector of orbital cortex and possibly to the adjoining ventral portion of dorsolateral frontal cortex as well. Impairment in spatial discrimination reversal was most severe in monkeys with dorsolateral frontal removal. These findings suggest that the perseverative effects of orbital frontal ablation can be fractionated into at least two components and further support the view that dorsolateral frontal cortex is associated with spatial factors.

The acquisition of conditional discriminations in baboons following temporal and frontal lesions

Baboons with bilateral inferotemporal lesions or with more extensive temporal lobe lesions learned a size-color conditional problem as easily as the normal controls, and more easily than those with dorsolateral frontal lesions. Despite the use of training techniques designed to equalize the initial learning scores of all the animals, the temporal operates were significantly impaired on the acquisition of the size discrimination. However, the finding that they were able to use this newly acquired visual information in the more complex conditional learning situation does not indicate a general inability to form stimulus-response associations with visual information. On the contrary, the results suggest that the principal difficulty of animals with temporal lesions is related to the initial perceptual analysis of the discrimination. If they are given sufficient experience with certain visual material, this acquired information is available for use in more complex visual learning situations. This experiment therefore provides another demonstration of the fact that despite a severe impairment on classical pattern discriminations, animals with inferotemporal lesions are able to learn certain visual problems.

Corticifugal influences on intrinsic brainstem conduction in cat and monkey.

ArticlesCORTICIFUGAL INFLUENCES ON INTRINSIC BRAINSTEM CONDUCTION IN CAT AND MONKEYW. Ross Adey, José P. Segundo, and Robert B. LivingstonW. Ross Adey, José P. Segundo, and Robert B. LivingstonPublished Online:01 Jan 1957https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.1957.20.1.1MoreSectionsPDF (3 MB)Download PDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesGet permissionsTrack citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInWeChat Back to Top Next Download PDF FiguresReferencesRelatedInformation Cited ByBrain inhibitory mechanisms involved in basic and higher integrated sleep processesBrain Research Reviews, Vol. 45, No. 3Properties of somatosensory evoked cortical potentials in alert, chronic catsExperimental Neurology, Vol. 57, No. 2The hippocampus and learningProgress in Neurobiology, Vol. 5Caudo-rostral brain stem reciprocal influences in the catBrain Research, Vol. 80, No. 1Hippocampal units during orienting and arousal in rabbitsExperimental Neurology, Vol. 44, No. 2Hippocampal suppression of intralaminar thalamic unit responses in cats and comparison with suppression evoked from the caudate nucleusBrain Research, Vol. 64Postsynaptic potentials in the mesencephalic and pontomedullar reticular regions underlying descending limbic influencesBrain Research, Vol. 56Serotonergic inhibition of catecholamine-induced behavioral arousalBrain Research, Vol. 49, No. 2Effects of dorsolateral frontal lesions on responsiveness to various stimulus parameters in the pigtail monkeyExperimental Neurology, Vol. 37, No. 1Interrelationships of hippocampal EEG and visual evoked responses during appetitive behavior in ratsBrain Research, Vol. 43, No. 1Corticifugal influences on the activity of reticular formation neurons in catsExperimental Neurology, Vol. 36, No. 2Control exerted during sleep by primary cortical areas upon different sensory afferentsElectroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, Vol. 33, No. 1Hippocampal and neostriatal inhibition of medial thalamic unit responses to somatic and brain stem stimulationBrain Research, Vol. 38, No. 1Corticifugal influences on reticular formation evoked activity in catsExperimental Neurology, Vol. 34, No. 3Postsynaptic responses of brain stem reticular neurons induced by hippocampal stimulationBrain Research, Vol. 36, No. 2Hippocampal control of behavioral arousal: Duration of lesion effects and possible interactions with recovery after frontal cortical damageExperimental Neurology, Vol. 33, No. 1Hippocampal and neostriatal inhibition of extralemniscal thalamic unitary responses in the catBrain Research, Vol. 27, No. 2Maintained and evoked unit activity in the mesencephalic reticular formation of the freely behaving catExperimental Neurology, Vol. 28, No. 3The psychophysiological basis of introversion-extraversionBehaviour Research and Therapy, Vol. 8, No. 3Isolated midbrain in catsElectroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, Vol. 28, No. 3The startle and orienting reactions in man. 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