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This study investigated the respective roles of the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the dorsal striatum in learning and memory. A standard set of experimental conditions for studying the effects of lesions to the three brain areas using an 8-arm radial maze was used: a win-shift version, a conditioned cue preference (CCP) version, and a win-stay version. Damage to the hippocampal system impaired acquisition of the win-shift task but not the CCP or win-stay tasks. Damage to the lateral amygdala impaired acquisition of the CCP task but not the win-shift or win-stay tasks. Damage to the dorsal striatum impaired acquisition of the win-stay task but not the win-shift or CCP tasks. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the mammalian brain may be capable of acquiring different kinds of information with different, more-or-less independent neural systems. A neural system that includes the hippocampus may acquire information about the relationships among stimuli and events. A neural system that includes the amygdala may mediate the rapid acquisition of behaviors based on biologically significant events with affective properties. A neural system that includes the dorsal striatum may mediate the formation of reinforced stimulus-response associations.
McDonald et al. (Tue,) studied this question.