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The nigrostriatal degeneration underlying Parkinson's disease (PD) is commonly modeled in experimental animals by injection of the neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA). Although a wide variety of simple behavioural screens exist to assess the impact of such dopamine lesions, more complex tasks that assess multiple parameters of an animal's performance may provide a more sensitive measure of the resulting functional impairment. This study assessed the performance of two unilateral lesion models of PD in a lateralised nose-poking task in the nine-hole box test apparatus. This task assesses the accuracy and speed of movements to either side of a rats’ head, as well as a number of errors of performance. Rats with complete unilateral dopamine depletion (induced by injection of 6-OHDA into the medial forebrain bundle (MFB)) attempted fewer trials and committed more procedural errors than controls …