between groups and previous recordings show that firing in ACC is relatively weak on GO trials (11). This result also suggests that basic motor functions remain intact. A third possibility is that ACC lesions impact mechanisms of arousal or attention. This is possible, but also seems unlikely because rats responded to houselights with a similar speed (t(724) = 0.6124, P = 0.5405) and did not show impairments on GO trials. Taken together, these findings suggest that ACC is necessary for the detection and mitigation of conflict between two competing action plans. That is not to say that ACC does not contribute to other functions, or that other brain areas do not contribute to these functions, but instead, these findings demonstrate that bother behavior and DMS activity relay on ACC to accomplish these particular features of executive control.
