The aim of the present work was to study the interaction between the ability to learn a new motor skill and the preference for the right or left forelimb on performing manipulatory movements in rats. The new skill was the Morris water test, in which the animals were initially trained to find a platform hidden beneath the water by swimming from the sector opposite the platform and then by swimming from sectors located to the left and right of the platform. Forelimb preference was identified in terms of the animal’s grasping food from a narrow horizontal tube, such that the rats were divided into left-handed and right-handed animals. Our findings showed that a change in the start position for the first episodes of swimming from the left or right sector significantly increased the platform-finding time in right-handed rats, as compared with left-handed.
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Translated from Zhurnal Vysshei Nervnoi Deyatel’nosti imeni I. P. Pavlova, Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 201–207, March–April, 2014.
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Budilin, S.Y., Pletneva, E.V., Ioffe, M.E. et al. Motor Asymmetry and the Learning of New Skills by Animals. Neurosci Behav Physi 45, 1063–1067 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-015-0186-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-015-0186-5