Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats

The medial frontal cortex (MFC) is critical for cost–benefit decision-making. Generally, cognitive and reward-based behaviour in rodents is not thought to be lateralised within the brain. In this study, however, we demonstrate that rats with unilateral MFC lesions show a profound change in decision-...

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Main Authors:	Croxson, Paula L, Walton, Mark E, Boorman, Erie D, Rushworth, Matthew F S, Bannerman, David M
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4440342/

id	pubmed-4440342
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-44403422015-05-27 Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats Croxson, Paula L Walton, Mark E Boorman, Erie D Rushworth, Matthew F S Bannerman, David M Behavioral Neuroscience The medial frontal cortex (MFC) is critical for cost–benefit decision-making. Generally, cognitive and reward-based behaviour in rodents is not thought to be lateralised within the brain. In this study, however, we demonstrate that rats with unilateral MFC lesions show a profound change in decision-making on an effort-based decision-making task. Furthermore, unilateral MFC lesions have a greater effect when the rat has to choose to put in more effort for a higher reward when it is on the contralateral side of space to the lesion. Importantly, this could not be explained by motor impairments as these animals did not show a turning bias in separate experiments. In contrast, rats with unilateral dopaminergic midbrain lesions did exhibit a motoric turning bias, but were unimpaired on the effort-based decision-making task. This rare example of a cognitive deficit caused by a unilateral cortical lesion in the rat brain indicates that the MFC may have a specialised and lateralised role in evaluating the costs and benefits of actions directed to specific spatial locations. Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2014-12 2014-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4440342/ /pubmed/25348059 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ejn.12751 Text en © 2015 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Croxson, Paula L Walton, Mark E Boorman, Erie D Rushworth, Matthew F S Bannerman, David M
spellingShingle	Croxson, Paula L Walton, Mark E Boorman, Erie D Rushworth, Matthew F S Bannerman, David M Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats
author_facet	Croxson, Paula L Walton, Mark E Boorman, Erie D Rushworth, Matthew F S Bannerman, David M
author_sort	Croxson, Paula L
title	Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats
title_short	Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats
title_full	Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats
title_fullStr	Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats
title_full_unstemmed	Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats
title_sort	unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats
description	The medial frontal cortex (MFC) is critical for cost–benefit decision-making. Generally, cognitive and reward-based behaviour in rodents is not thought to be lateralised within the brain. In this study, however, we demonstrate that rats with unilateral MFC lesions show a profound change in decision-making on an effort-based decision-making task. Furthermore, unilateral MFC lesions have a greater effect when the rat has to choose to put in more effort for a higher reward when it is on the contralateral side of space to the lesion. Importantly, this could not be explained by motor impairments as these animals did not show a turning bias in separate experiments. In contrast, rats with unilateral dopaminergic midbrain lesions did exhibit a motoric turning bias, but were unimpaired on the effort-based decision-making task. This rare example of a cognitive deficit caused by a unilateral cortical lesion in the rat brain indicates that the MFC may have a specialised and lateralised role in evaluating the costs and benefits of actions directed to specific spatial locations.
publisher	Blackwell Publishing Ltd
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4440342/
_version_	1613226566604554240

Unilateral medial frontal cortex lesions cause a cognitive decision-making deficit in rats

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