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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Mark EldridgeORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply 2024.The study of anthropoid nonhuman primates has provided valuable insights into frontal cortex function in humans, as these primates share similar frontal anatomical subdivisions (Murray et al. 2011). Causal manipulation studies have been instrumental in advancing our understanding of this area. One puzzling finding is that macaques with bilateral aspiration removals of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are impaired on tests of cognitive flexibility and emotion regulation, whereas those with bilateral excitotoxic lesions of OFC are not (Rudebeck et al. 2013). This discrepancy is attributed to the inadvertent disruption of fibers of passage by aspiration lesions but not by excitotoxic lesions. Which fibers of passage are responsible for the impairments observed? One candidate is cholinergic fibers originating in the nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) and passing nearby or through OFC on their way to other frontal cortex regions (Kitt et al. 1987). To investigate this possibility, we performed unilateral aspiration lesions of OFC in three macaques, and then compared cholinergic innervation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) between hemispheres. Histological assessment revealed diminished cholinergic innervation in the ACC of hemispheres with OFC lesions relative to intact hemispheres. This finding indicates that aspiration lesions of the OFC disrupt cholinergic fibers of passage, and suggests the possibility that loss of cholinergic inputs to ACC contributes to the impairments in cognitive flexibility and emotion regulation observed after aspiration but not excitotoxic lesions of OFC.
Author(s): Eldridge MAG, Mohanty A, Hines BE, Kaskan PM, Murray EA
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Brain Structure and Function
Year: 2024
Volume: 229
Issue: 4
Pages: 1011-1019
Print publication date: 01/05/2024
Online publication date: 19/03/2024
Acceptance date: 19/02/2024
Date deposited: 19/02/2025
ISSN (print): 1863-2653
ISSN (electronic): 1863-2661
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-024-02776-6
DOI: 10.1007/s00429-024-02776-6
Data Access Statement: The full dataset is available in the Figshare repository, DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.244991
PubMed id: 38502331
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