De Russi Gaia, Bertolucci Cristiano, Lucon-Xiccato Tyrone
Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, University of Ferrara, 44121 Ferrara, Italy.
J Exp Biol. 2025 Jan 15;228(2). doi: 10.1242/jeb.249272. Epub 2025 Jan 23.
Environmental light, particularly during early development, significantly influences lateralisation, the asymmetric information processing between brain hemispheres. We hypothesised that lateralisation could be affected by artificial light at night (ALAN), a widespread form of environmental pollution. In our experiment, we exposed eggs and larvae of zebrafish to either control or ALAN conditions and then tested them in a rotational test to assess motor lateralisation, and a mirror test to assess lateralisation in response to visual stimuli. The control group exhibited a significant lateralisation bias at the population level, prioritising the processing of visual information with their right hemisphere. In contrast, the zebrafish exposed to ALAN did not show this bias, leading to a notable reduction in lateralisation. Additionally, we found evidence of reduced individual differences in lateralisation in the ALAN group. Overall, our findings demonstrate that ALAN disrupts the natural lateralisation in fish larvae, possibly affecting their behaviour and survival.
环境光，尤其是在早期发育阶段，会显著影响大脑半球之间不对称信息处理的偏侧化。我们假设偏侧化可能会受到夜间人造光（ALAN）的影响，这是一种广泛存在的环境污染形式。在我们的实验中，我们将斑马鱼的卵和幼体暴露于对照或ALAN条件下，然后在旋转测试中对它们进行测试以评估运动偏侧化，并在镜像测试中评估对视觉刺激的偏侧化反应。对照组在群体水平上表现出显著的偏侧化偏好，优先使用其右半球处理视觉信息。相比之下，暴露于ALAN的斑马鱼没有表现出这种偏好，导致偏侧化显著降低。此外，我们发现ALAN组中偏侧化的个体差异有所减少。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，ALAN会破坏鱼类幼体的自然偏侧化，可能影响它们的行为和生存。
