Jm. Phillips et Vj. Brown, Anticipatory errors after unilateral lesions of the subthalamic nucleus inthe rat: Evidence for a failure of response inhibition, BEHAV NEURO, 114(1), 2000, pp. 150-157
The nature of anticipatory responding in rats with unilateral subthalamic n
ucleus lesions was examined. Rats were trained to respond toward visual tar
gets that were preceded by 1 of 4 different cues. For normal rats, a cue in
vokes an involuntary attentional orienting that enhances processing of the
target at the location of attention. The cue is also a salient stimulus to
which a response must be suppressed. Therefore, this task was used to inves
tigate possible attentional impairments, as well as the ability of a lesion
ed rat to suppress competing motor programs. Responding under target contro
l was not affected by the lesion. Then was an increase in anticipatory resp
onses before target onset, which could be accounted for by a failure to inh
ibit contralateral responses.