Neuroscience
A curious report from New Scientist:
- Rats Can Be Trained To Perform Search And Rescue Missions
Step aside batman and superman, there's a new hero in townBy guest blogger Mary Bates Search and rescue dogs are commonly used to find people trapped in the debris of collapsed buildings, but are search and rescue rats next? A new study suggests the...
- Watching New Memories Form
Biologically-speaking, new memories are based on changes to synapses – the gaps across which neurons communicate with each other. Now scientists in America say they have found a way to witness these synaptic changes right after they've happened,...
- Phew! How Rats Sigh When They're Relieved
If you ever hear a rat sigh, don’t worry it’s not because they’re getting impatient, rather it’s because they’re relieved, a behaviour that probably evolved as a safety signal to other rats. That’s according to Stefan Soltysik and Piotr Jelen...
- Livescience.com - Fish Explores Land With Robotic Device
LiveScience.com - Fish Explores Land with Robotic Device Here's the question. What happens if you raise the fish in this environment from birth -- does it learn to behave differently than a fish in their usual environments? Suppose we used a rat instead...
- (laughing) Rats In The News
Did you know that rats laugh? Jaak Panksepp, neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University, talks about how rats actually laugh. Science News Online quotes him as saying "but you have to know the rat." And in this week's Science Times, Natalie...
Neuroscience
Trained Olfactory Signalling in Rats
A curious report from New Scientist:
Rats' brain waves could find trapped people
19:00 22 September 04
Rats equipped with radios that transmit their brainwaves could soon be helping to locate earthquake survivors buried in the wreckage of collapsed buildings.
Rats have an exquisitely sensitive sense of smell and can crawl just about anywhere. This combination makes them ideal candidates for sniffing out buried survivors. For that, the animals need to be taught to home in on people, and they must also signal their position to rescuers on the surface.
In a project funded by DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, Linda and Ray Hermer-Vazquez of the University of Florida in Gainesville have worked out a way to achieve this.
Trained rats reach the places that sniffer dogs cannot
First the researchers identified the neural signals rats generate when they have found a scent that they are looking for. “When a dog is sniffing a bomb, he makes a unique movement that the handler recognises,” says John Chapin, a neuroscientist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn who is collaborating on the project. “Instead of the rat making a conditioned response, we pick up the response immediately from the brain.”
[ ... Read the full report ... ]
- Rats Can Be Trained To Perform Search And Rescue Missions
Step aside batman and superman, there's a new hero in townBy guest blogger Mary Bates Search and rescue dogs are commonly used to find people trapped in the debris of collapsed buildings, but are search and rescue rats next? A new study suggests the...
- Watching New Memories Form
Biologically-speaking, new memories are based on changes to synapses – the gaps across which neurons communicate with each other. Now scientists in America say they have found a way to witness these synaptic changes right after they've happened,...
- Phew! How Rats Sigh When They're Relieved
If you ever hear a rat sigh, don’t worry it’s not because they’re getting impatient, rather it’s because they’re relieved, a behaviour that probably evolved as a safety signal to other rats. That’s according to Stefan Soltysik and Piotr Jelen...
- Livescience.com - Fish Explores Land With Robotic Device
LiveScience.com - Fish Explores Land with Robotic Device Here's the question. What happens if you raise the fish in this environment from birth -- does it learn to behave differently than a fish in their usual environments? Suppose we used a rat instead...
- (laughing) Rats In The News
Did you know that rats laugh? Jaak Panksepp, neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University, talks about how rats actually laugh. Science News Online quotes him as saying "but you have to know the rat." And in this week's Science Times, Natalie...