As humans, we live in our thoughts: from pondering what to make for dinner to daydreaming about our last beach vacation. Now, researchers at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus have found that animals also possess an imagination.
love to get science confirming things that we mostly already suspect. like genuinely, it’s nice to have evidence to back up things that we want to believe.
On an unrelated note, the VR device they created to test this is kind of fascinating. Like…
The rat is harnessed in the VR system, designed by Shinsuke Tanaka, a postdoc in the Lee Lab. As the rat walks on a spherical treadmill, its movements are translated on the 360-degree screen. The rat is rewarded when it navigates to its goal…In the second task, the “Jedi” task—a nod to Star Wars—the rat moves an object to a location by thoughts alone. The rat is fixed in a virtual place but “moves” an object to a goal in the VR space by controlling its hippocampal activity, like how a person sitting in their office might imagine taking a cup next to the coffee machine and filling it with coffee.
They made an interface that allows a rat to control a virtual avatar with brain activity alone? I did not expect that to be how this test worked.
love to get science confirming things that we mostly already suspect. like genuinely, it’s nice to have evidence to back up things that we want to believe.
On an unrelated note, the VR device they created to test this is kind of fascinating. Like…
They made an interface that allows a rat to control a virtual avatar with brain activity alone? I did not expect that to be how this test worked.