LEARNING AND TRANSFER OF OBJECT-REWARD ASSOCIATIONS AND THE ROLE OF THE PERIRHINAL CORTEX

Perirhinal cortex ablation has previously been shown only to impair ne w postoperative object discrimination learning with large stimulus set sizes (greater than or equal to 40 problems). In this study, 3 cynomo lgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) with bilateral perirhinal dorter ab lations were impaired relative to 3 normal controls on concurrent disc rimination learning tasks with only 10 problems with the objects prese nted in different orientations in each trial to increase the demands p laced on object identification. This supports the hypothesis that peri rhinal cortex damage impairs the ability to identify multiple individu al objects. Fewer errors were made to digitized images of objects than toward real objects. Both groups subsequently transferred specific ob ject-reward associations from real objects to digitized images of the respective objects and vice versa, providing evidence that cynomolgus monkeys can recognize photographic representations of objects with exp erience.