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Compared 15 rats with lesions of the medial frontal, orbital frontal, or parietal cortex with 5 rats with complete removal of the neocortex and 5 normal controls on 3 spatial tasks: Morris water task, radial arm maze, and spatial reversals in a Grice box. Decortication produced severe impairments in the acquisition of all 3 tasks. Ss with parietal cortex lesions were relatively unimpaired at any of the tasks, although they had a significant deficit on the spatial reversal task and had a short-term memory impairment on the radial arm maze. In contrast, Ss with medial frontal lesions had a significant, but relatively mild, impairment on the radial arm maze and were poor at learning the water task. Ss with orbital frontal lesions were nearly as impaired on the radial arm maze and water task as decorticate Ss. Results suggest that the frontal and parietal cortex of rats play different roles in the control of spatial orientation but do not …