Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Jul 5;8(1):10153.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-28334-9.

Attentional state and brain processes: state-dependent lateralization of EEG profiles in horses

C Rochais  1 , M Sébilleau  1 , M Menoret  2 , M Oger  3 , S Henry  1 , M Hausberger  4 , H Cousillas  5
Affiliations

Attentional state and brain processes: state-dependent lateralization of EEG profiles in horses

C Rochais et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Lateralization of brain functions has been suggested to provide individuals with advantages, such as an increase of neural efficiency. The right hemisphere is likely to be specialized for processing attention for details and the left hemisphere for categorization of stimuli. Thus attentional processes actually may underlie lateralization. In the present study, we hypothesized that the attentional state of horses could be reflected in the lateralization of brain responses. We used i) a recently developed attention test to measure horses' visual attentional responses towards a standardized stimulus and ii) a recently developed portable EEG telemetric tool to measure brain responses. A particular emphasis was given to the types of waves (EEG power profile) and their side of production when horses were either attentive towards a visual stimulus or quiet standing. The results confirmed that a higher attentional state is associated with a higher proportion of gamma waves. There was moreover an interaction between the attentional state, the hemisphere and the EEG profile: attention towards the visual stimulus was associated with a significant increase of gamma wave proportion in the right hemisphere while "inattention" was associated with more alpha and beta waves in the left hemisphere. These first results are highly promising and contribute to the large debate on functional lateralization.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
EEG wave profiles according to the attentional state and hemisphere on Day 1: (a) attentive state; (b) quiet state. The attentional state was characterized by a higher proportion of gamma waves in the right hemisphere and the quiet state by a higher proportion of alpha waves in the left hemisphere. Post-hoc Tukey test; ***P = 0.003, **P = 0.028.
Figure 2
Figure 2
EEG device: headset placed on an attentive horse’s head.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Rogers, L. J. & Andrew, R. Comparative Vertebrate Lateralization. (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
    1. Frasnelli E, Vallortigara G, Rogers LJ. Left–right asymmetries of behaviour and nervous system in invertebrates. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 2012;36:1273–1291. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.02.006. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Vallortigara, G. & Bisazza, A. How ancient is brain lateralization? in Comparative vertebrate lateralization 9–69 (Rogers LJ, Andrew RJ, 2002).
    1. Rogers, L. J., Vallortigara, G. & Andrew, R. J. Divided Brains: The Biology and Behaviour of Brain Asymmetries. (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
    1. Vallortigara, G. & Versace, E. Laterality at the neural, cognitive, and behavioral levels. in APA handbooks in psychology. APA handbook of comparative psychology: Basic concepts, methods, neural substrate, and behavior 557–577 (J. Call, G. M. Burghardt, I. M. Pepperberg, C. T. Snowdon, & T. Zentall, 2017).

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources