Figure 1.

Experimental details and visual discrimination. (A) Experimental paradigm including pictorial summary of touchscreen training, visual discrimination, and reversal learning. Rats are first habituated to the food rewards and the touchscreen itself, and then progress to assessment of visual discrimination and cognitive flexibility. Arrows indicate passing of training and testing stages based on a priori criteria. The two MRI cohorts are represented by different colors. (B) Regions of interest for DTI analyses anterior (corresponding to Bregma 3.72 mm): red—medial prefrontal; teal—lateral prefrontal; dark blue—ventral prefrontal; middle (Bregma −0.12 mm) and posterior (Bregma −3.00 mm): yellow—barrel cortex, purple—lesion cortex, neon pink—lateral white matter, green—corpus callosum, light blue—striatum, orange—hippocampus, dark blue—thalamus. (C) All 3 groups committed a similar number of errors prior to passing visual discrimination (VD), demonstrating that injured rats can complete the VD task (n = 6–8). (D) Likewise, all 3 groups required a similar number of sessions to performance criteria. (E) Rats in all 3 groups displayed a similar reaction time to respond to touchscreen stimuli. (F) Rats also demonstrated a similar motivation to retrieve the reward for a correct response.