03 Nov 2023 at 13:12
Rats, like humans, can imagine walking to a certain place or bringing an object from point A to B. This means that rats seem to have imagination just like humans.
Researchers at the Janelia Research Campus developed a kind of thought detector with virtual reality. This measured the activities in the rat brain. The brain signals were then linked to the rat’s experiences in a virtual reality environment.
The scientists discovered that the same patterns are visible in the rodents’ brains as in the brains of humans when they experience certain things. It concerns neural activity patterns in the hippocampus. That is the part of the brain responsible for spatial memory.
The research shows that rats can voluntarily initiate these activity patterns. They do this, for example, to ‘remember’ remote locations.
This ability is crucial for remembering past events or imagining future scenarios. Therefore, the research suggests that rats have imagination just like humans.
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2023-11-03 12:12:02
#Rats #imagination #humans #Science
