Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Early experience in infancy affects cognitive development. Birds, like mammals, acquire cognitive flexibility attributed to a well-developed telencephalon. Precocial chicks acquire imprintability just after hatching when thyroid hormone (T 3 ) flows into the brain and primes later learning. Here, we show that the perihatch synthesis of T 3 paralleling thyroid development is crucial for imprinting and endows newborn chicks with cognitive flexibility via a mechanism involving the nidopallium dorsocaudale, the avian “prefrontal cortex.” Imprinted chicks showed higher cognitive flexibility than those unimprinted in switching or reversal task experiments. Notably, we discovered that exogenous T 3 endowed similar flexibility in unimprinted chicks. Cognitive stimulation by a surge of thyroid hormone indicates a vertebrate tactic involving high cognitive ability for adapting to environmental changes.
Source: Science Advances
Institution: Teikyo University
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,500
OpenAlex ID: W4403329616