Mice Memories: New Scientific Research Shows Rats Have Imaginations, Too

What if I told you that rats have an imagination, too?

The world is torn by multiple military conflicts, and humankind is preoccupied with war and war’s alarms, we can’t be paying any attention to rat’s feelings and dreams – or can we?

The fact is: whether we are dreaming of peace on Earth or simply pondering how best to rearrange our political systems, humans are able to mentally conjure up myriad situations that are not in front of us.

Now, scientific research has strongly suggested that rats may be able to do something similar. It’s been found that rats ‘can navigate their way through a space they have previously explored using their thoughts alone’, which would mean that the rodents have some sort of imagination.

The Guardian reported:

“Chongxi Lai, the first author of the study from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus, said the study was the first to show animals can, at will, flexibly activate the brain’s representations of places that are distant from where they currently are.

‘This is a fundamental building block of a specific type of imagination, one that enables us to project ourselves into the past or future, within a certain scenario’, he said.”

A region of the brain called the hippocampus contains a ‘mental map’ depicting previously explored environments.  When we move through locations within such an environment, particular neurons fire in the brain.

Humans can also imagine navigating through places that they have previously visited.

“To explore whether rats can do the same, and unpick a possible mechanism, researchers employed a brain-machine interface in which electrodes were surgically implanted into the rats’ brains. The rats were then placed on a treadmill ball within a 360-degree immersive virtual reality (VR) arena, and presented with an on-screen goal to run towards. As the rats moved, and the treadmill ball turned, the animal’s apparent location within the VR environment updated on screen – as if the rat was running through a real environment. When the rats reached the goal, they received a treat and the goal was moved within the VR environment. The process was then repeated.”

A region of the brain called the hippocampus contains a ‘mental map’ depicting previously explored environments.  When we move through locations within such an environment, particular neurons fire in the brain.

Humans can also imagine navigating through places that they have previously visited.

“To explore whether rats can do the same, and unpick a possible mechanism, researchers employed a brain-machine interface in which electrodes were surgically implanted into the rats’ brains. The rats were then placed on a treadmill ball within a 360-degree immersive virtual reality (VR) arena, and presented with an on-screen goal to run towards. As the rats moved, and the treadmill ball turned, the animal’s apparent location within the VR environment updated on screen – as if the rat was running through a real environment. When the rats reached the goal, they received a treat and the goal was moved within the VR environment. The process was then repeated.”

After they recorded the activity within the animals’ hippocampus, the team translated this neural activity to specific locations within the virtual reality environment.

Next, there is no more treadmill. Now, rats could only use their brain activity to navigate through the VR environment. Results reveal rats could indeed navigate to the goal using just their brain activity.

“In a subsequent experiment, the team gave the rats a “Jedi task” in which the animals themselves were stationary but had to direct an object on the screen to a particular goal within the VR environment using only their brain activity. Once again, the rats were able to do so.”

Now, science has credibly demonstrated that, akin to humans, animals have an imagination.

Neuroscience News reported:

“’The rat can indeed activate the representation of places in the environment without going there’, says Chongxi Lai, a postdoc in the Harris and Lee Labs and first author of a paper describing the new findings. ‘Even if his physical body is fixed, his spatial thoughts can go to a very remote location’.

This ability to imagine locations away from one’s current position is fundamental to remembering past events and imagining possible future scenarios. Therefore, the new work shows that animals, like humans, possess a form of imagination, according to the study’s authors.

‘To imagine is one of the remarkable things that humans can do. Now we have found that animals can do it too, and we found a way to study it’, says Albert Lee, formerly a Group Leader at Janelia and now an HHMI Investigator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.”

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