Publication Date:
1997-10-23
Description:
Rats learn a novel foraging pattern better with their right-side whiskers than with their left-side whiskers. They also learn better with the left cerebral hemisphere than with the right hemisphere. Rotating an already learned maze relative to the external environment most strongly reduces right-whisker performance; starting an already learned maze at a different location most strongly reduces left-whisker performance. These results suggest that the right-periphery-left-hemisphere system accesses a map-like representation of the foraging problem, whereas the left-periphery-right-hemisphere system accesses a rote path. Thus, as in humans, functional asymmetries in rats can be elicited by both peripheral and cortical manipulation, and each hemisphere makes qualitatively distinct contributions to a complex natural behavior.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉LaMendola, N P -- Bever, T G -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1997 Oct 17;278(5337):483-6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9334310" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Brain/*physiology
;
*Dominance, Cerebral
;
Functional Laterality
;
Male
;
*Maze Learning
;
Rats
;
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
;
Vibrissae/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
