Get the latest tech news
These Rats Learned to Drive—and They Love It
Driving represented an interesting way for neuroscientists to study how rodents acquire new skills, and unexpectedly, rats had an intense motivation for their driving training.
Building on foundational learning approaches such as operant conditioning, which reinforces targeted behavior through strategic incentives, we trained the rats step-by-step in their driver’s ed programs. 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. One day, a student noticed something strange: One of the rats in the group trained to expect positive experiences had its tail straight up with a crook at the end, resembling the handle of an old-fashioned umbrella.
Or read this on Wired
