Anticipatory and perseverative errors following frontal lesions in the rat.

Abstract

Several studies have supported the hypothesis that lesions in an animal''s frontal cortex increased anticipatory errors in seriatim behavior, i.e., the animal makes errors which would be correct later in a behavior sequence. However, these studies involved behavior tests in which only anticipatory errors were available to the animal. With a serial multiple visual discrimination apparatus in this study, no significant difference was found in the incidence of anticipatory errors between operated and control groups. Perseverative errors and total error scores were significantly higher in operated animals with frontal lesions, as compared with nonoperated controls.