Santacà Maria, Dadda Marco, Dalla Valle Luisa, Fontana Camilla, Gjinaj Gabriela, Bisazza Angelo
Department of Biology, University of Padova, Viale Giuseppe Colombo 3 - Via Ugo Bassi 58/B, 35131 Padova, Italy.
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy.
iScience. 2022 Apr 22;25(5):104283. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104283. eCollection 2022 May 20.
With the exception of humans, early cognitive development has been thoroughly investigated only in precocial species, well developed at birth and with a broad behavioral and cognitive repertoire. We investigated another highly altricial species, the zebrafish, , whose embryonic development is very rapid (< 72 h). The hatchlings' nervous system is poorly developed, and their cognitive capacities are largely unknown. Larvae trained at 8 days post fertilization rapidly learned to associate a visual pattern with a food reward, showing significant performance at 10 days post fertilization. We exploited this ability to study hatchlings' discrimination learning capacities. Larvae rapidly and accurately learned color and shape discriminations. They also discriminated a figure from its mirror image and from its 90°-rotated version, although with lower performance. Our study revealed impressive similarities in learning and visual discrimination capacities between newborn and adult zebrafish, despite their enormous differences in brain size and degree of development.
除人类外，早期认知发展仅在早熟物种中得到了充分研究，这些物种出生时发育良好，具有广泛的行为和认知能力。我们研究了另一种高度晚成的物种——斑马鱼，其胚胎发育非常迅速（<72小时）。幼鱼的神经系统发育不完善，其认知能力在很大程度上未知。受精后8天训练的幼虫迅速学会将视觉模式与食物奖励联系起来，在受精后10天表现出显著的行为。我们利用这种能力研究幼鱼的辨别学习能力。幼虫迅速而准确地学会了颜色和形状辨别。它们还能将一个图形与它的镜像以及90°旋转后的图形区分开来，尽管表现稍差。我们的研究揭示了新生斑马鱼和成年斑马鱼在学习和视觉辨别能力上令人印象深刻的相似之处，尽管它们在脑大小和发育程度上存在巨大差异。
