Abstract
A spatial orienting task was used to assess attention in rats with selective cholinergic lesions of the basal forebrain. The task required each rat to press a lever in response to a visual target that could occur in one of two locations. A target could be preceded by a cue that either accurately predicted the location of the target (valid) or appeared in the location opposite the target (invalid). Target detection was facilitated by valid cues and degraded by invalid cues in control rats. Performance of rats with lesions was equivalent to that of control rats for valid cues, but reflected an increased cost of invalid cueing. These data support a modulatory role for the basal forebrain cholinergic system in visuospatial attention.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3119-3123 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Neuroreport |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 14 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 29 1999 |
Keywords
- 192 IgG-saporin
- Attention
- Cholinergic basal forebrain
- Nucleus basalis
- Orienting
- Substantia innominata
- Target detection
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Neuroscience(all)