A unilateral medial frontal cortical lesion impairs trial and error learning without visual control

About the author

Dr. Céline Amiez is a CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) Researcher based at the Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute (SBRI) / INSERM (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) U846 at the University of Lyon, France. She completed her Ph.D. in electrophysiology with Dr. Jean-Paul Joseph (Bron, France) and her post-doctoral fellowship in functional neuroimaging with Dr. Michael Petrides (McGill University, Montreal QC, Canada). Her research aims to understand the anatomo-functional organization of the frontal cortex in primates.

About the author

Dr. Anne Sophie Champod is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Acadia University and a clinical neuropsychologist in Nova Scotia, Canada. She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at McGill University (Montreal, QC, Canada) and her postdoctoral work at Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS, Canada). Her research has aimed to better understand the neuronal basis of attention and working memory processes with the ultimate goal of developing new assessment techniques and rehabilitation interventions to improve cognitive functioning in neurological populations. Her current research work involves the development of new assessment tools and rehabilitation interventions targeting spatial attention skills that are frequently affected in stroke.

About the author

Dr Charlie Wilson is a post-doctoral researcher at the Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute (SBRI), INSERM (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in the University of Lyon, France. He trained with Dr David Gaffan at the Dept. Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford working on primate neuropsychology, and subsequently with Dr Emmanuel Procyk in Lyon working on electrophysiological techniques. His research focuses on the long-term cognitive and neurophysiological changes that occur whilst human and non-human primate subjects learn to learn, and whilst they use cognitive control to make efficient decisions, focusing on the critical role contributed by specific cortical regions. He also works on the role of dopamine in cognitive control processes, in particular using a primate model of the Parkinsonian brain.

About the author

Dr. Emmanuel Procyk is based at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), where he leads an INSERM (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) lab at the Stem Cell and Brain Research institute in the University of Lyon, France. Trained as a neurophysiologist with Dr. Jean Paul Joseph (Bron, France) and Dr. Patricia Goldman-Rakic (Yale, USA), he now seeks to understand the neural bases of adaptive cognitive functions in primates.

About the author

Michael Petrides is a James McGill Professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery and the Department of Psychology at McGill University. He obtained a B.Sc. in Experimental Psychology and a M.Sc. in Neurological Science from the University of London and then a Ph.D. in Behavioural Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. He subsequently worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Montreal Neurological Institute and as a research fellow at Harvard Medical School. The major aspect of Dr. Petrides’ research work is concerned with understanding the functional and anatomical organization of the primate frontal cortex. He has pursued this work in studies with patients who had excisions from the frontal cortex for the treatment of epilepsy, in studies on monkeys with selective lesions in particular parts of the frontal cortex, and in functional neuroimaging studies in healthy human participants. Based on this work he has proposed an influential theoretical framework to understand the functional organization of the lateral prefrontal cortex. Another aspect of his work has been the comparative cytoarchitectonic analysis of the human and the monkey prefrontal cortex that allows integration of research on nonhuman primates with research on the human brain.

Journal Reference

Neuropsychologia. 2015;75:314-21.

Amiez C¹, Champod AS², Wilson CR³, Procyk E⁴, Petrides M⁵.

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Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U846, Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, 69675 Bron, France; Université de Lyon, Lyon 1, Unité Mixte de Recherche S-846, 69003 Lyon, France; Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A2B4.
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A2B4; Brain Repair Centre, Dalhousie University, Life Sciences Research Institute, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4R2; Acadia University, Department of Psychology, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada B4P 2R6.
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U846, Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, 69675 Bron, France; Université de Lyon, Lyon 1, Unité Mixte de Recherche S-846, 69003 Lyon, France.
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U846, Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, 69675 Bron, France; Université de Lyon, Lyon 1, Unité Mixte de Recherche S-846, 69003 Lyon, France. Electronic address: [email protected].
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A2B4.

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Abstract

There is considerable debate regarding the involvement of the medial frontal cortex in motor and cognitive functions. Recent neuroimaging data suggest a fundamental underlying process that links the motor and cognitive roles of the mid-cingulate cortex (MCC), namely the processing of feedback during trial and error learning in the cingulate motor region that is related to the modality of the feedback. These data suggest that the specific motor context of a task may be a critical determinant of how its outcome is processed in the MCC. We assessed a patient before and after surgery for brain tumour removal in the medial frontal cortex, and a group of matched control subjects. Subjects had to find by trial and error the stimulus associated with the correct feedback amongst four or five similar stimuli. Subjects performed the task in two different visuo-motor contexts: with the response pad and hand visible and with no sight of either pad or hand. The patient showed a selective impairment in this task relative to control subjects in the hardest conditions and the impairment was most marked when the response pad and the hand were not visible. The results support a specific role of the medial frontal cortex in the construction of a sensorimotor representation of choices and related feedback by encoding the contingency between an efference copy of the action and its outcome.

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