Individual fitness often depends on the ability to inhibit behaviours not adapted to a given situation. However, inhibitory control can vary greatly between individuals of the same species. We investigated a mechanism that might maintain this variability in zebrafish (Danio rerio). We demonstrate that inhibitory control correlates with cerebral lateralization, the tendency to process information with one brain hemisphere or the other. Individuals that preferentially observed a social stimulus with the right eye and thus processed social information with the left brain hemisphere, inhibited foraging behaviour more efficiently. Therefore, selective pressures that maintain lateralization variability in populations might provide indirect selection for variability in inhibitory control. Our study suggests that individual cognitive differences may result from complex multi-trait selection mechanisms.

个人适应度通常取决于抑制不适应给定情况的行为的能力。然而，同一物种的个体之间的抑制控制可能会有很大差异。我们研究了一种可能在斑马鱼中保持这种变异性的机制（Danio rerio）。我们证明抑制控制与大脑偏侧化相关，即用一个大脑半球或另一个大脑半球处理信息的趋势。优先用右眼观察社会刺激从而用左脑半球处理社会信息的个体更有效地抑制了觅食行为。因此，维持种群侧化变异性的选择压力可能为抑制控制的变异性提供间接选择。我们的研究表明，个体认知差异可能源于复杂的多特征选择机制。