Recovery of function after serial ablation of prefrontal cortex in the rhesus monkey.

Rhesus monkeys with one-stage or serial ablation of sulcus principalis (prefrontal association cortex) were compared on three spatial tasks. On all tests, the serial monkeys made fewer errors than did the monkeys with onestage lesions. These results indicate that partial recovery of function can occur after extensive destruction of association cortex in the mature primate brain if the damage is distributed over a number of operations.