Paw preference, one of the well-studied behavioural markers of asymmetry, has been associated with affective states and pathologies such as behavioural despair, a rodent model of clinical depression. However, a consistent differential effect of paw preference has not been observed for cognitive functions. In order to investigate the affective properties of paw preference together with its potential cognitive effects, we grouped male Wistar rats as left- or right-pawed, and tested them in the forced swim test and Morris water maze for behavioural despair and spatial memory performance, respectively. We found that left-pawed rats were significantly more susceptible to behavioural despair, while spatial learning performance of the two groups were not different over a five-day Morris water maze task. Left-pawed rats, however, displayed a better reference memory than the right-pawed ones on the subsequent probe trial when the hidden platform of the maze was removed. These findings indicate paw preference as a vulnerability factor for behavioural despair and reveal a previously unknown association between left-paw preference and reference memory performance as assessed in the probe trial of the Morris water maze.

中文翻译：

---

爪子偏好与雄性大鼠的行为绝望和空间参考记忆有关

爪子偏好是一种经过充分研究的不对称行为标志物，与情感状态和病理有关，例如行为绝望，一种啮齿动物临床抑郁症模型。然而，尚未观察到爪子偏好对认知功能的一致差异影响。为了研究爪子偏好的情感特性及其潜在的认知影响，我们将雄性 Wistar 大鼠分组为左爪或右爪，并在强迫游泳测试和莫里斯水迷宫中测试它们的行为绝望和空间记忆表现，分别。我们发现左爪大鼠明显更容易受到行为绝望的影响，而在为期五天的莫里斯水迷宫任务中，两组的空间学习表现没有差异。然而，左爪老鼠，当迷宫的隐藏平台被移除时，在随后的探测试验中显示出比右爪更好的参考记忆。这些发现表明，爪子偏好是行为绝望的脆弱因素，并揭示了在莫里斯水迷宫的探测试验中评估的左爪偏好与参考记忆性能之间以前未知的关联。