Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton and I'm Trey sicker and it's time for a brainstorm. Scientists taught rats how to drive brings me such joy of rats and ants. I want to know so much more about so many good things. Well you're going to get some good things today cause we're going to talk about the ROV first. What's an ROV? A rodent operated vehicle. I'd love that. Very, very much. So. I'm going to describe this thing because I want you to have this in your head. Remote control car base with what looks like a Lego tires and that's the car base. And on top of that is a clear plastic foresighted container. It looks like something you'd get like two pounds of salted nuts in from Costco. Yeah. Okay. The white lid, you know that kind of thing. That's got a hole cut out of the front with a little grid on it.
Speaker 0 00:59 So the rat stays in the car and the controls are inside the container with the rat. Okay. So why are we teaching rats how to drive? Well, university of Richmond neuroscientists, Kelly Lambert was thinking about how well we learn in a more enriched environment. Okay. So instead of giving rats pretty simple tasks like we have for mazes and things like that, they wanted something a little more complicated. So they designed this car with an aluminum floor and then there's, there's a copper bar and depending on where they're holding it, like to the right or to the left or to the middle that steers the car. Cause when the rat has its front paws on the copper bar and its back paws on the aluminum, it creates a circuit. And so the car goes, they're not getting electrocuted. It's a rat power. It's an ROV. Right. They started putting them in larger and larger areas with a fruit loops as the reward.
Speaker 0 01:57 And if they could get to the fruit loop, if they could get to the, yeah. So they started them off putting them in the car, facing the fruit loops and not very far away. So all they had to do was go forward. And then gradually it got more and more complicated. But here's the cool thing. So they started training them at five months of age, 11 male rats, 60 male rats taught to drive the car. But not all of them learned the same way. So this is where that complex stimulating environment comes from. So lab rats are usually kept in pretty simple containers. You know, you got some stuff on the floor, there's water, there's food, that's it. Some of them were kept in those environments. Some of them were kept in super deluxe rat accommodations. They had larger cages, they had ladders to go up and down.
Speaker 0 02:42 They were given things like pine cones and grass. It was switched out weekly. So there's new things or things and those rats that were living in the more enriched environment learn to drive faster. Huh. So there's this idea that doing something all the time and being really active and then learning how to do this complicated thing gives you this sense of satisfaction. This is sort of like Maslow's hierarchy of need paired with growth mindset. Yeah. And so in humans we call this self agency. Like, I'm learning how to do something and I'm, I feel good about myself because, Hey, I learned how to do this thing. Yes. And we can't ask the rat cycle. Yes. We can't ask the rats, Hey, do you feel better about yourself? But we can look at their stress hormones. Their stress hormones are less, which indicates that they're feeling better about it.
Speaker 0 03:31 They, they seem to enjoy, I mean, like they're actively getting into the car and driving through, making the choice. Yeah. You know, they're there, they're doing it. And so rats are such an interesting subject because of their willingness and their intelligence. I mean, that's quite amazing. And so Kelly Lambert and her crew are wondering if these rats, learning to drive studies might one day help us understand Parkinson's disease and depression and all of these kinds of things where human beings, if you were sitting at home and you're not doing anything new and you're not learning anything new in this very restricted environment, that you're not going to have that drive to learn and do. Yeah. And I'm curious about, um, how it might affect the way we as American schools do school. Well, I imagine the more, the more opportunities you have to do things hands on and things you find engaging and interesting and finding a way to make that part of the educational process. Yeah. Maybe we just need to teach kids how to drive little remote control cars. Yeah, that's a great brainstorm. Why? Thank you. You want to hear more? We are on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast and you can find us on Twitter as at my brain junk trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything. You never knew. You wanted to know my guarantee. You will not be bored.
