Impairment of utilization of response-produced cues after frontopolar lesions in rats.

Ablation of the frontal pole was followed by the deterioration of returning behavior; position discrimination in an enclosed T maze was also affected. Both tests required the utilization of response produced cues: In the elevated T maze, in which extra-maze visual cues were available, the lesion had no effect on position discrimination. Introduction of differential visual cues to the enclosed T maze resulted in superior performance of the frontopolar group compared to that of the normal group. However, the visual discrimination experiment did not reveal the superiority of frontopolar rats, which suggests that the frontopolar rats are more attentive to visual stimuli only in situations requiring the use of response produced cues.