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Rats learned to drive
Equipped with a rodent version of a Cybertruck, these driving rats reveal that positive experiences may sculpt the brain just as powerfully as stressful ones
Rats hitting the road in their custom-made cruisers.Kelly Lambert, CC BY-ND Working with postdoctoral fellow Kitty Hartvigsen, I designed a new protocol that used waiting periods to ramp up anticipation before a positive event. Preliminary results suggest that rats required to wait for their rewards show signs of shifting from a pessimistic cognitive style to an optimistic one in a test designed to measure rodent optimism. Natural forms of opiates and dopamine – key players in brain pathways that diminish pain and enhance reward – seem to be telltale ingredients of the elevated tails in our anticipation training program.
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