Limitations of the rat medial forebrain lesion model to study prefrontal cortex mediated cognitive tasks in Parkinson's Disease.

•A 6-OHDA induced medial forebrain bundle lesion rodent model of Parkinson’s Disease (PD): Produces stable and robust motor impairment in rodents.•Impairments in the simple discrimination task of attentional set shifting paradigm.•Produces temporal order memory deficits, but not in spatially-driven object recognition task.•No difference between male and female rats in cognitive flexibility and memory tasks.•Does not recapitulate the PFC-mediated cognitive deficits observed in PD patients.