Dataset for “Blocking-like” effects in attentional set-shifting: redundant cues facilitate shifting in male rats with medial prefrontal cortex inactivation

Behavioural data presented in a paper with the title “Blocking-like” effects in the attentional set shifting task: redundant cues facilitate shifting in male rats with medial prefrontal cortex inactivation. The excel data sheet contains the raw, unprocessed data from an attentional set shifting task. This is a self-paced foraging task for the rat. Food is buried in one of two bowls that differ according to the media inside the bowl and the scent added to the media. In a single session on one day, the rat completes a series of two-choice discriminations to find the buried food. We inactivated medial prefrontal cortex and replicated a deficit in set-shifting seen after lesions of a comparable area. We then modified the task, introducing novel, predictive, but redundant cues prior to the shift stage. In this condition rats learned the subsequent set-shift discrimination more rapidly. Both results can be accounted for by a single impairment in the down regulation of attention to irrelevant cues. Each line in the Excel sheet corresponds to an individual 'trial' of an individual rat. The columns indicate treatment condition; stage of the test; progress through the stage; the exemplars in use; and whether the rat correctly identified the location of the food.