Next, we determined if ACC lesions impacted the ability of rats to adapt to the need to change action plans on trials subsequent to STOP-change trials. As described previously, rats were more accurate on STOP-change trials following a STOP-change trial (i.e., conflict adaption) (11). We replicated this result here by comparing performance on STOP-change trials when the STOP-change trial was preceded by either a GO (gS) or a STOP (sS) trial. We observed a significant main effect of lesion (F(1,1432) = 15.84, P < 0.0001) and previous trial-type (F(1,1432) = 16.97, P < 0.0001), but no significant interaction (F(1,1438) = 0.00002, P = 0.9959), demonstrating that, although ACC lesioned rats perform worse on STOP-change trials overall, they still retain the ability to adapt their behavior after experiencing response conflict (Fig. 1F).
