Recent recordings from primate LC neurons in our lab during cognitive performance revealed phasic LC activation ~ 230 msec prior to the initiation of behavioral responses. This activation was more tightly time-locked to the behavioral response than to the sensory stimulus (Clayton et al., SFN Abstr. 2003; Rajkowski et al., J Neurophysiol., in press; Iba et al., this meeting). This and other evidence indicates that the LC activation is driven by decision processes and serves to facilitate ensuing behavioral responses. However, LC activity was only examined in animals overtrained and performing at high accuracy levels. Here, we examined LC activity during training in cognitive paradigms to examine the phasic LC activation as subjects acquired new behavioral responses. Two rhesus macaques were trained in a two-alternative forced choice task (FC), one in an oculomotor delayed matching to sample task, and one monkey underwent reversal training in a target detection task (TD). Unlike results in well-trained subj...