In the journal Science published on Thursday, November 2, researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, USA, revealed that rats had surprising cognitive abilities. You could imagine places and objects.
Just as people plan the menu for the next Christmas dinner and the optimal arrangement of the guests at the table, rats are also able to imagine a situation that is not currently happening. In the journal Science published on Thursday, November 2, researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, USA, revealed that rats can navigate a space they have already explored using the power of their thoughts alone.
Chongxi Lai, one of the authors of the study from the American Institute of Medical Research, revealed that this theory is the first to prove that rodents can imagine places far from where they live. “It is a fundamental element of a certain type of imagination that 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 type of mental model or map that would describe the environments already explored. Therefore, when a person moves to certain places that they already know, certain neurons in the brain fire.
If people can imagine walking, running, or dancing in a place they have visited before, such as the kitchen of their home, how does this manifest itself in the rat’s brain?
Fruitful experiments for the benefit 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 in an immersive virtual reality arena.
In 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. When they reached their destination, they received a reward. The process was repeated several times, with researchers taking care to record the animals’ hippocampal activity.
A second step was to remove 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 rodents’ brain activity.
Rats are closer to humans than we think
Each experiment was successful for the rodents. The results of the various brain analyzes during the missions showed that the rats could only approach a target using their brains.
Professor Tim Harris, co-author of the paper published in the journal Science, said imagination and memory in humans are likely linked to activity in the hippocampus. Therefore, it is possible to imagine what is happening in real life. Likewise, “it is fair to say that rats are imagining things,” the researcher concluded matter-of-factly.