Learned behavior following lesions of posterior association cortex in infant, immature, and preadolescent monkeys.

Abstract

Bilateral lesions in temporal neocortex and pre- and parastriate areas were produced in groups of monkeys at 130, 370, and 900 days, respectively. Delayed response performance of these groups was appropriate to age and apparently normal. Consistent deviations from normal patterned-strings performance and a deficit in object-quality discrimination learning were observed only in the 900-day group. The latter was not permanent and recovery was attributed to the ability of these Ss to relearn the use of color, but not form, cues in discrimination problems. In general the results support the hypothesis that sparing of function after ablations of posterior association cortex is related to type of test and age at the time of operation.