Animals navigate the maze with the power of thought.
Man known for his ability to travel to other worlds just by closing his eyes. A study published in the journal Science shows that we are not alone in our ability: rats also have imaginations.
In the experiment, they were able to imagine objects and places that were not directly in front of their eyes. The rats were even able to navigate in these imaginary environments.
“People can imagine all kinds of environments in their minds: apartments, shops, libraries and neighborhoods. By remembering these places, we can also settle in them ourselves. Now we have proven that another animal can do the same, which is very impressive,” says the Vanderbilt University psychologist Sean Polyn Science- for the scientific journal.
Imagined environments connect to the hippocampus in humans. The brain area is responsible for memory and storing spatial information.
When a person walks in an environment, neurons in the hippocampus are activated. If a person later visits or imagines visiting the same place, the same neurons fire up again.
With the help of these mental maps, a person is able to remember past events and plan for the future.
Rats have also been found to store location information in their hippocampus. However, researchers have not been able to find out how the rats use this information for orientation.
In fresh tin research Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Chongxi Lai and his colleagues finally found a way to study the imagination of rats.
In research used a device that measured and interpreted rats’ brain signals in real time. So it was a kind of mind reading device.
In this way, an experimental set-up was created, which could be used to test whether a rat can activate brain areas related to a certain environment without actually walking through them.
The researchers designed a virtual arena that was projected onto a 360-degree screen surrounding the rats. The rats were able to move from one place to another in the virtual arena by stepping on a ball-shaped running wheel that served as a computer mouse.
If the rats managed to navigate to the correct places in the arena, they were rewarded with a treat. As the rats wandered around the arena, the researchers measured the activity of their hippocampus at the same time.
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The rats had to move around the arena only in their thoughts. Still, they managed to find their way to the prizes.
I will try in the second step, the researchers disconnected the treadmill from the virtual arena. The rats could still see the arena, but the running wheel no longer had any effect on it. On the screens, the researchers projected in real time the parts of the arena that the rat was thinking about at each moment.
When the rats replayed the route they had previously taken in their mind, they were able to navigate through the arena to the rewards. Some of the rats still tried to use the running wheel as an aid, but some remained in place.
In the third stage, which the researchers named Star Wars -inspired by the movies as a Jedi stage, the virtual arena was also locked in place. So the rats had to move in the arena only in their thoughts. Still, they managed to find their way to the prizes.
The experiment showedthat rats were able to control the activity of their hippocampus very precisely and flexibly, just like humans.
It is not yet clear what exactly a rat experiences when it navigates with the power of thought and how exactly its imagination corresponds to the inner workings of a human.
Researchers are still convinced that rodents are able to think about things that are not in their immediate vicinity, and repeat routes in their minds even when they are not physically moving from one place to another.
“I think that counts as imagination,” the York University neuroscientist Shayna Rosenbaum commenting on colleagues’ research Science-for a scientific journal.
Published in Tiede magazine 1/2024