Rats show imagination power similar to humans – 11/23/2023 – Science

Rats can imagine places they are not and objects they cannot see, according to research. The finding suggests that intelligent rodents depicted in Hollywood films such as “Ratatouille” may be less fanciful than they seem.

Virtual reality analyzes of these animals’ brain activity showed that they developed the idea of ​​going to previously visited locations and moving items they recognized from one area to another, according to the article published in the journal Science earlier this month.

Research conducted by experts from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States reveals the mental sophistication of animals and promises to boost development in the area of ​​neuroprosthetics, that is, the use of brain functions to control devices such as artificial limbs, robotic arms or implants auditory.

“Imagining is one of the amazing things humans can do,” said Albert Lee, one of the paper’s authors. “Now we discover that animals can do this too.”

The work used experiments designed by lead author Chongxi Lai and others to focus on the hippocampus, the area of ​​the brain linked to spatial memory, imagination and learning.

The researchers used a brain-machine interface to measure electrical activity in the hippocampus as rats ran along a spherical treadmill toward a reward. The team then unplugged the treadmill to see if the rodents would repeat previously observed brain patterns while remaining still.

One test — dubbed Jumper after a 2008 film that featured a teleporting main character — hooked mice up to a virtual reality screen to show how they thought about navigating toward their goals.

A second test — called Jedi after the mind-controlling knights in the Star Wars films — investigated brain patterns that corresponded to rodents imagining moving an object that was not in sight.

The mice were able to imagine the actions needed to achieve their goals, the researchers found. Rodents have proven capable of fixating their thoughts on a specific location for several seconds, much like humans do when remembering a past experience or imagining a future event.

The findings about hippocampal activity offer clues about the “richness of our inner lives,” the Maryland-based HHMI researchers wrote.

The mouse research represents an “exciting expansion” in the use of “brain-machine” interfaces, according to Michael Coulter of the University of California and Caleb Kemere of Rice University in Texas, who were not involved in the research.

In a commentary published separately in the journal Science, they stated that the experiments provided a new tool for investigating “circuit-level mechanisms of mental navigation and spatial imagination.”

Although the imaginative power of rats is less sophisticated than that of the rodent hero of “Ratatouille” as he struggles to become a top chef in Paris, the findings will help develop practical applications related to the human mind.

“I haven’t seen Ratatouille, but I’ve worked with rats for a long time and they seem to be focused and thinking,” Lee said. “They’re quite complex and have mostly the same brain areas that humans have.”