2023-11-04 15:32:45
In the journal Science published Thursday, November 2, researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia in the United States revealed that rats had surprising cognitive abilities. They would be able to imagine places and objects.
In the same way that humans plan on the menu for the next Christmas meal and the best arrangement of guests around the table, rats are also capable of imagining a situation that is not happening at the moment. In Science magazine published Thursday, November 2, researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, United States, revealed that rats could navigate a space that they have already explored by the sole force of their thoughts.
Chongxi Lai, one of the authors of the study from the American Institute of Medical Research, revealed that this thesis was the very first to demonstrate that rodents could imagine places far from where they are. “It is a fundamental element of a particular type of imagination, which allows us to project ourselves into the past or into the future, within the framework of a certain scenario,” explained the researcher.
A region of the human brain, called the hippocampus, would contain a sort of mental model, or map, which would describe the environments already explored. As a result, when an individual moves to specific places that they already know, specific neurons fire in the brain.
If humans can imagine themselves walking, running, or dancing in a place they’ve visited before, like their apartment kitchen, how does this manifest in the rat’s brain?
Fruitful experiments in favor of Science
To identify the rodent’s brain mechanism, the researchers used an interface in which electrodes were surgically implanted into the rats’ brains. The animals were then placed on a treadmill, inside an immersive virtual reality arena.
During a first experiment the rats moved and the treadmill rotated. Their position within the virtual environment was updated on the screen, as if the rodents were actually moving around. Once their goal was achieved, they received a treat. The process was repeated numerous times, while the researchers took care to record the animals’ hippocampal activity.
A second step consisted of removing the treadmill from the virtual reality system. The rats had to remain static and use their brain activity to navigate the virtual environment. In parallel with this new test, the researchers continued to record the brain activity of the rodents.
Rats are closer to humans than we think
Each experiment was successful by the rodents. The results of the various brain analyzes during the missions demonstrated that the rats could move towards an objective using only their brains.
Professor Tim Harris, co-author of the work published in the journal Science, said that in humans, imagination and memory were likely to be linked to activity in the hippocampus. Therefore, it is possible to imagine what happens in real life. In the same way, “it is fair to say that rats imagine,” the researcher soberly concluded.
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