The extent to which rats have a PFC has been the subject of debate (Uylings et al., 2003; Seamans et al., 2008). The main issue of controversy is whether rats have a prefrontal area that is comparable with the dorsolateral PFC of primates. In their review of the extant human, nonhuman primate, and rodent literature, Uylings et al. (2003) concluded that, similar to primates, rodents do in fact have a region of the frontal cortex that can be defined both anatomically and functionally as PFC. They provide a strong argument that rats have a functionally divided prefrontal cortex that includes not only features of the medial and orbital areas in primates, but also some features of the primate dorsolateral PFC. In a more recent review, Seamans et al. (2008) took this a step further by suggesting that the rat medial PFC combines elements of the primate dorsolateral PFC and ACC at a rudimentary level that in primates may have formed the building blocks required for abstract rule encoding during evolutionary expansion of the PFC dorsally.
