Handling in infancy, taste aversion, and brain laterality in rats

Rats were handled for the first 20 days of life or were not disturbed. When adults, they were trained to approach and drink from a bottle containing sweetened milk and were then given an injection of lithium chloride to induce a taste aversion conditioned emotional response. Others were injected with physiological saline. Rats within each of the treatment groups were then randomly assigned to 4 surgical procedures: removal of the right or left neocortex; sham surgery; or no surgery. Postoperatively, they were tested for retention of taste aversion by presenting the sweetened milk and recording the amount consumed. The initial consummatory behavior was very low (showing retention of the aversion) and increased over time. There were no differences in the reacquisition curves of the non-handled groups which had received lithium chloride. The curves of the handled groups did differ: thos with an intact right hemisphere (left neocortical lesion) had the lowest asymptote, followed by the group with an intact left brain, while those with intact whole brains consumed the greatest amount of milk. In the groups given an injection of physiological saline, those with a left hemisphere lesion consumed less milk than the other groups, regardless of their early handling experience. The data show: (1) that the rat's brain is lateralized, with the right hemisphere being preferentially involved in conditioned emotional behavior; and (2) that handling in infancy makes the left hemisphere less suceptible to conditioned fear.