rodents

Given that human and rat brains have a lot of similarities (they share the same basic anatomy and use the same neurotransmitters), a question naturally arose: if Toxoplasma can alter the behavior of a rat, could it alter a human? Obviously, this manipulation would not do the parasite any good as an adaptation, since it's…

Guided rats – so-called ratbots – controlled through implants in their brains could one day be used to search for landmines or buried victims of earthquakes, scientists say. The extraordinary experiment involves researchers steering five rats through an obstacle course by remote control. Writing in the journal Nature, they say the ratbots could reach places…

Stories of reversibility are always the funniest, like the one about the rat and the psychologist: the rat tells about how he ended up by perfectly conditioning the psychologist to give him a piece of bread every time he lifted the gate of his cage. Based on this story you could imagine, on the level…

If the phenomenon is forcing us through a learning curve, then it has no choice but to mislead us. When Skinner designs a machine that feeds a rat only when the right lever is depressed, this is extremely misleading for the rat. But if the rat doesn’t depress the correct lever, he becomes extremely hungry.…