Bibost Anne-Laurence, Brown Culum
Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Anim Cogn. 2014 Sep;17(5):1045-51. doi: 10.1007/s10071-014-0734-3. Epub 2014 Feb 15.
Cerebral lateralization has been suggested to convey a selective advantage to individuals by enhancing their cognitive abilities. Few, however, have explicitly compared the cognitive ability of animals with strongly contrasting laterality. Here, we examined the influence of laterality on learning performance in the crimson spotted rainbowfish, Melanotaenia duboulayi, using a classical conditioning paradigm. We also compared the learning ability of wild caught and captive-reared fish to examine the influence of rearing environment on cognitive performance. Laterality was established by observing which eye fish preferred to use while viewing their mirror image. Subjects were then conditioned to associate the appearance of a red light with a food reward over 7 days. Our results revealed that left-lateralized fish learned the conditioning task faster than right-lateralized. These results provide further evidence that cerebral lateralization can play important roles in cognitive function which likely have diverse fitness consequences for animals in their natural environments.
大脑侧化被认为通过增强认知能力为个体带来选择性优势。然而，很少有人明确比较过具有强烈对比性偏侧性的动物的认知能力。在这里，我们使用经典条件反射范式，研究了偏侧性对红斑虹银汉鱼（Melanotaenia duboulayi）学习表现的影响。我们还比较了野生捕获和圈养繁殖的鱼类的学习能力，以研究饲养环境对认知表现的影响。通过观察鱼在观看自己的镜像时更喜欢使用哪只眼睛来确定偏侧性。然后让受试者在7天内将红灯的出现与食物奖励联系起来。我们的结果表明，左侧化的鱼比右侧化的鱼更快地学会了条件任务。这些结果提供了进一步的证据，表明大脑侧化可以在认知功能中发挥重要作用，这可能对动物在自然环境中的适应性产生多种影响。
