2025/05/27 by Elena Groneberg, S. Helene Richter, Sylvia Kaiser · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Hemispheric Asymmetry in Neuroscience #Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior #Primate Behavior and Ecology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/eth.13580
openalex publication_date 2025/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/19
ABSTRACT The phenomenon of hand and paw preferences has been an integral part of laterality research for many years. Scientists agree that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the development of laterality. Whereas early‐life factors such as rearing conditions were already found to influence behavioural lateralisation, evidence for an influence of environmental factors later in life is mostly missing. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of environmental novelty during adolescence and adulthood on the paw preference in female rats, Rattus norvegicus f. domestica . Since novelty is predominantly processed in the right hemisphere of the brain, a prolonged exposure to novel combinations of environmental enrichment items was assumed to elicit a right hemisphere activation, which is reflected in a left paw preference. To assess behavioural lateralisation, three different paw preference tests of different complexities (food reaching, tool use and climbing) were conducted three times in total. We found that a regular enrichment change did not alter the behavioural lateralisation in rats neither during adolescence nor adulthood. Different explanations for this finding, such as an insufficient level of novelty or a late onset of novelty exposure, are discussed. The direction of lateralisation was found to be stable over time for the two complex tasks, food reaching and tool use. Moreover, a decrease in strength of lateralisation over time was observed, indicating increased flexibility of paw use. In conclusion, the study confirmed previous findings on stable paw preferences in complex test situations in rats. The increased flexibility in paw use over time represents an interesting similarity to humans, as strength of handedness was also found to decrease with age. Therefore, our findings underline the need for further studies on behavioural lateralisation in nonhuman animals.