Laterality in Responses to Acoustic Stimuli in Giant Pandas

Abstract

Cerebral lateralization is a common feature present in many vertebrates and is often observed in response to various sensory stimuli. Numerous studies have proposed that some vertebrate species have a right hemisphere or left hemisphere dominance in response to specific types of acoustic stimuli. We investigated lateralization of eight giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) by using a head turning paradigm and twenty-eight acoustic stimuli with different emotional valences which included twenty-four conspecific and four non-conspecific acoustic stimuli (white noise, thunder, and vocalization of a predator). There was no significant difference in auditory laterality in responses to conspecific or non-conspecific sounds. However, the left cerebral hemisphere processed the positive stimuli, whereas neither of the two hemispheres exhibited a preference for processing the negative stimuli. Furthermore, the right hemisphere was faster than the left hemisphere in processing emotional stimuli and conspecific stimuli. These findings demonstrate that giant pandas exhibit lateralization in response to different acoustic stimuli, which provides evidence of hemispheric asymmetry in this species.

A short review on emotion processing: a lateralized network of neuronal networks

“…Chimpanzees and several species of Old World monkeys display a right hemisphere dominance for both the perception and expression of emotions (Lindell 2013 ; Zhao et al 2020 ). Giant pandas exhibit a leftwards lateralization in the processing of positive but not of negative stimuli (Liu et al 2021 ). In dogs, positively and negatively valenced stimuli are associated with a higher amplitude of tail-wagging movements to the right and to the left side, respectively (Siniscalchi et al 2013 ).…”