Horizontal biases in rats' use of three-dimensional space.

ABSTRACT: Rodent spatial cognition studies allow links to be made between neural and behavioural phenomena, and much is now known about the encoding and use of horizontal space. However, the real world is three dimensional, providing cognitive challenges that have yet to be explored. Motivated by neural findings suggesting weaker encoding of vertical than horizontal space, we examined whether rats show a similar behavioural anisotropy when distributing their time freely between vertical and horizontal movements. We found that in two- or three-dimensional environments with a vertical dimension, rats showed a prioritization of horizontal over vertical movements in both foraging and detour tasks. In the foraging tasks, the animals executed more horizontal than vertical movements and adopted a "layer st

SUBMITTER: Jovalekic A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3157560 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature