Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Università di Padova, Padova, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2017 Oct 13;7(1):13144. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-13447-4.
Inhibitory control is an executive function that positively predicts performance in several cognitive tasks and has been considered typical of vertebrates with large and complex nervous systems such as primates. However, evidence is growing that some fish species have evolved complex cognitive abilities in spite of their relatively small brain size. We tested whether fish might also show enhanced inhibitory control by subjecting guppies, Poecilia reticulata, to the motor task used to test warm-blooded vertebrates. Guppies were trained to enter a horizontal opaque cylinder to reach a food reward; then, the cylinder was replaced by a transparent one, and subjects needed to inhibit the response to pass thought the transparency to reach the food. Guppies performed correctly in 58% trials, a performance fully comparable to that observed in most birds and mammals. In experiment 2, we tested guppies in a task with a different type of reward, a group of conspecifics. Guppies rapidly learned to detour a transparent barrier to reach the social reward with a performance close to that of experiment 1. Our study suggests that efficient inhibitory control is shown also by fish, and that its variation between-species is only partially explained by variation in brain size.
抑制控制是一种执行功能，它能正向预测几种认知任务的表现，被认为是具有大型复杂神经系统的脊椎动物（如灵长类动物）的典型特征。然而，越来越多的证据表明，一些鱼类物种尽管大脑相对较小，但已经进化出了复杂的认知能力。我们通过让孔雀鱼（Poecilia reticulata）接受用于测试温血脊椎动物的运动任务，来测试鱼类是否也具有增强的抑制控制能力。我们训练孔雀鱼进入水平的不透明圆柱体以获得食物奖励；然后，用透明的圆柱体代替不透明的圆柱体，而受试鱼需要抑制通过透明体的反应，以通过透明体到达食物。孔雀鱼在 58%的试验中表现正确，这一表现与大多数鸟类和哺乳动物观察到的表现完全相当。在实验 2 中，我们在一个具有不同奖励类型的任务中测试了孔雀鱼，即一群同种鱼。孔雀鱼迅速学会了绕过透明障碍物，以获得社交奖励，其表现与实验 1 接近。我们的研究表明，鱼类也表现出有效的抑制控制能力，其种间差异部分仅由大脑大小的差异来解释。
