ArticleeLife2025
Prenatal light exposure affects number sense and the mental number line in young domestic chicks.
Article in eLife, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Numbers Driving Space: Experience With Numerical Sequences Modulates Spatial Behavior in Newborn Chicks (Gallus gallus).Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Is 'number sense' a sense?eLife · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Humans order numerosity along a left-to-right mental number line (MNL), traditionally considered culturally rooted. Yet, some species at birth show spatial-numerical associations (SNA), suggesting neural origins. Various accounts link SNA to brain lateralization but lack evidence. We investigated brain lateralization effects on numerical spatialization in 100 newborn domestic chicks. In ovo light exposure yielded strongly lateralized brains in half the chicks and weakly lateralized in the other half. Chicks learned to select the 4th item in a sagittal array. At the test, the array was rotated 90°, with left and right 4th items correct. Strongly lateralized chicks outperformed weakly lateralized ones when ordinal and spatial cues were reliable (experiment 1), but not with unreliable spatial cues (experiment 2). Moreover, only strongly lateralized chicks showed left-to-right directionality, suggesting the right hemisphere's key role in integrating spatial and numerical cues. We demonstrate that brain lateralization is fundamental for developing a left-to-right oriented SNA.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.