* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Why Starz Entertainment Stock Soared Today – The Motley Fool

    Unpacking the Surge: What Fueled Starz Entertainment’s Stock Explosion Today!

    Unveiling the Enigmatic: First Looks at Destruction and Puck in ‘The Sandman

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    This giant microwave may change the future of war – MIT Technology Review

    Revolutionizing Warfare: The Impact of a Game-Changing Giant Microwave

    Bajeed Pattan Joins Forbes Technology Council as Innovation Leader – PRWeb

    Bajeed Pattan Takes the Helm as Innovation Leader at Forbes Technology Council!

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Why Starz Entertainment Stock Soared Today – The Motley Fool

    Unpacking the Surge: What Fueled Starz Entertainment’s Stock Explosion Today!

    Unveiling the Enigmatic: First Looks at Destruction and Puck in ‘The Sandman

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    This giant microwave may change the future of war – MIT Technology Review

    Revolutionizing Warfare: The Impact of a Game-Changing Giant Microwave

    Bajeed Pattan Joins Forbes Technology Council as Innovation Leader – PRWeb

    Bajeed Pattan Takes the Helm as Innovation Leader at Forbes Technology Council!

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Rats may have imaginations

November 2, 2023
in Science
Rats may have imaginations
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

The ability to get lost in thoughts and use our imaginations to daydream might not be completely unique to humans. A study published November 2 in the journal Science found that rats can think about objects and places that are not right in front of them. 

[Related: How science came to rely on the humble lab rat.]

Imagining locations that are away from our current position is a component of both memory and conjuring up possible future scenarios. If animals have this ability, they could have a form of imagination that is similar to our species.

“The rat can indeed activate the representation of places in the environment without going there,” Chongxi Lai, a co-author of the study and engineer and neuroscientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said in a statement. “Even if his physical body is fixed, his spatial thoughts can go to a very remote location.”

To learn more, Lai and a team at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland designed a series of experiments to see if rats can use their thoughts to imagine going towards a specific location or moving a remote object.

A new brain-machine interface and virtual reality system for rats. In this experiment, a rat uses this system to navigate to a goal solely by thinking about where it wants to go. According to the rules of this system, physical movement by the rat does not affect the rat’s location in the virtual environment. Only by controlling its hippocampal brain activity can the rat control where it goes. Specifically, in this system the animal is virtually moved toward the ‘decoded location’ that the hippocampal activity represents. CREDIT: Lai et al.

Reading a rat’s mind

When humans and rodents experience events or visit places, specific neural activity patterns are activated in their hippocampus. This area of the brain is responsible for spatial memory and stores mental maps of the rat’s world. It is also involved in recalling past events and imagining future situations. To recall memories, specific patterns related to places and events are generated in the hippocampus. Chimpanzees have been shown to have the ability to pretend, but scientists are still figuring out how chimps and other non-human animals think. 

To peer inside of a rat’s brain and look at these brain patterns, the team developed a real-time “thought detector.” This system measures neural activity and translates what it means using a brain-machine interface (BMI). 

The BMI produced a connection between the electrical activity occurring in the rat’s hippocampus and the animal’s position in a 360-degree virtual reality arena. It allowed the researchers to see if a rat can activate hippocampal activity to think about a location in the virtual arena without physically traveling there. 

A rat ‘thought dictionary’

With the BMI in place, the team worked to decode the brain signals in the rats. They built a “thought dictionary” of what the brain activity patterns looked like when the rat was traveling through the virtual arena in the experiment.

To do this, the rat was harnessed into a virtual reality system. As the rat walked on a spherical treadmill, its movements were translated onto a 360-degree screen. The rat was rewarded when it navigated towards its goal.

While the rat walked on the treadmill, the BMI system recorded the activity occurring in the hippocampus. The team saw which neurons were activated when the rat navigated the virtual arena to reach each goal. These signals provided them with the basis for a real-time translation of what was going on in the hippocampus.

With the thought dictionary set up, the team disconnected the treadmill. The rat was rewarded for the first step of reproducing the hippocampal activity pattern that was associated with walking towards a goal location.

The Jumper task and the Jedi task

Next, they designed two different tasks for the rats to perform–the Jumper task and the Jedi task.

In the Jumper task, the BMI translated the rat’s brain activity into motion on a screen. The animal was essentially using its thoughts to find a reward by thinking about where it needs to go to obtain it. This is a thought process similar to traveling to work or school and imagining the buildings and places we will pass along the way. 

[Related: We probably have big brains because we got lucky.]

The Jedi task had a rat hypothetically move an object to a location in its mind. The rat was fixed in a virtual place, but controlled its hippocampal activity to envision moving the object towards a goal. This is similar to how a person sitting on a couch imagining  getting up and refilling a water glass in a kitchen. The team then changed the location of the rat’s goal, which required it to produce activity patterns associated with the new location.

They found that the rats can precisely and flexibly control their hippocampal activity. Surprisingly, they could sustain this activity and hold their thoughts on a given location for many seconds. This time frame is similar to the amount of time humans can take to relive past events or imagine new scenarios.

“The stunning thing is how rats learn to think about that place, and no other place, for a very long period of time, based on our, perhaps naïve, notion of the attention span of a rat,” Tim Harris, a study co-author and biophysicist from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said in a statement.

According to the team, this study shows how BMI can be used to probe hippocampal activity and could be a new way to study this critical region of the brain. BMI is increasingly used in prosthetics, and this new work could be used to develop devices based on these same principles.

Laura Baisas

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Popular Science – https://www.popsci.com/science/rats-may-have-imaginations/

Tags: imaginationsscience
Previous Post

Slice up to 30% off KitchenAid mixers and more with this early Black Friday sale at Amazon

Next Post

Apple Watch 10 to measure blood pressure, blood sugar measurement was already planned for the first Apple Watch

Why Starz Entertainment Stock Soared Today – The Motley Fool

Unpacking the Surge: What Fueled Starz Entertainment’s Stock Explosion Today!

June 1, 2025
White House acknowledges problems in RFK Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ report – AP News

White House Admits Flaws in RFK Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Report

June 1, 2025
N.Y. landlords, lawmakers to face off over expanding upstate rent control – Spectrum News

Showdown Ahead: N.Y. Landlords and Lawmakers Clash Over Expanding Rent Control Upstate!

June 1, 2025
This giant microwave may change the future of war – MIT Technology Review

Revolutionizing Warfare: The Impact of a Game-Changing Giant Microwave

June 1, 2025
EA SPORTS™ College Football 26 Launches Worldwide on July 10 Celebrating Emerging Stars, Real-world Coaches and the Spirit of College Football – Electronic Arts Home Page

Get Ready for EA SPORTS™ College Football 26: Launching Worldwide on July 10 to Celebrate Rising Stars and the Heart of College Football!

June 1, 2025
Some birds are left behind in a race to beat the heat – Nature

Some birds are left behind in a race to beat the heat – Nature

June 1, 2025
A passing star could fling Earth out of orbit – Science News

A passing star could fling Earth out of orbit – Science News

June 1, 2025
John Hancock Multimanager Lifestyle Moderate Portfolio Q1 2025 Commentary (JALMX) – Seeking Alpha

Unlocking Potential: Insights from the John Hancock Multimanager Lifestyle Moderate Portfolio Q1 2025

June 1, 2025
Editorial: The world promised by AI isn’t necessarily a better one – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Editorial: The world promised by AI isn’t necessarily a better one – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

June 1, 2025
Little Rock economy growing faster than other similarly-sized cities, study shows – thv11.com

Little Rock’s Economy Outpaces Peers: A Promising Growth Story!

June 1, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (656)
  • Economy (671)
  • Entertainment (21,578)
  • General (15,254)
  • Health (9,714)
  • Lifestyle (673)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (672)
  • Politics (680)
  • Science (15,891)
  • Sports (21,176)
  • Technology (15,659)
  • World (659)

Recent News

Why Starz Entertainment Stock Soared Today – The Motley Fool

Unpacking the Surge: What Fueled Starz Entertainment’s Stock Explosion Today!

June 1, 2025
White House acknowledges problems in RFK Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ report – AP News

White House Admits Flaws in RFK Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Report

June 1, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version