Apr 28, 2024 08:47 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 28, 2024 09:44 PM by Magical Realist.)
"Western scrub jays cache (in many locations) different types of foodstuff, such as tasty worms that rot within a short time, and less-favored peanuts that stay edible for much longer. They later remember not only where they cached the different foods, but also when: they recover worms soon after caching, and peanuts when they return to feed long after caching. Interestingly, they are aware of the possibility of theft by other jays. They re- cache food if they were watched while caching, but only if they themselves are thieves!
There are many examples of imaginative planning by birds and mammals, and there are more limited examples of the imaginative ability of some fish, bees, and cuttlefish. It is likely that imagination evolved gradually and to different degrees in different species. Curiously, most imaginative animals are social. Are their social sensibilities related to their imaginative capacities? Whatever the answer and however striking animal imagination is, it remains in the private domain. The ability to communicate about what one imagines is peculiar to humans."---- https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-d...ted-guide/
https://neurosciencenews.com/animal-imag...fic%20spot.
"Using a unique combination of virtual reality and a brain-machine interface, they probed a rat’s innermost thoughts. The rats were found to voluntarily generate neural activity patterns in the hippocampus, reflecting spatial memory.
Essentially, these rodents can imagine being in locations or moving objects without physically doing so.
Key Facts:
The researchers developed a real-time “thought detector” that measures and decodes neural activity in the rat’s hippocampus to determine its spatial thoughts.
In a virtual reality setup, rats showed they could control their hippocampal activity to imagine navigating to specific locations or moving objects solely by thought.
This hippocampal activity can be sustained for extended periods, showing a rat’s capacity to focus its thoughts much like humans reliving past events or imagining new scenarios.
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.
A team from the Lee and Harris labs developed a novel system combining virtual reality and a brain-machine interface to probe the rat’s inner thoughts.
The researchers then changed the location of the goal, requiring the animal to produce activity patterns associated with the new location.
They found that, like humans, animals can think about places and objects that aren’t right in front of them, using their thoughts to imagine walking to a location or moving a remote object to a specific spot.
Like humans, when rodents experience places and events, specific neural activity patterns are activated in the hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for spatial memory. The new study finds rats can voluntarily generate these same activity patterns and do so to recall remote locations distant from their current position.
“The rat can indeed activate the representation of places in the environment without going there,” says Chongxi Lai, a postdoc in the Harris and Lee Labs and first author of a paper describing the new findings. “Even if his physical body is fixed, his spatial thoughts can go to a very remote location.”
There are many examples of imaginative planning by birds and mammals, and there are more limited examples of the imaginative ability of some fish, bees, and cuttlefish. It is likely that imagination evolved gradually and to different degrees in different species. Curiously, most imaginative animals are social. Are their social sensibilities related to their imaginative capacities? Whatever the answer and however striking animal imagination is, it remains in the private domain. The ability to communicate about what one imagines is peculiar to humans."---- https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-d...ted-guide/
https://neurosciencenews.com/animal-imag...fic%20spot.
"Using a unique combination of virtual reality and a brain-machine interface, they probed a rat’s innermost thoughts. The rats were found to voluntarily generate neural activity patterns in the hippocampus, reflecting spatial memory.
Essentially, these rodents can imagine being in locations or moving objects without physically doing so.
Key Facts:
The researchers developed a real-time “thought detector” that measures and decodes neural activity in the rat’s hippocampus to determine its spatial thoughts.
In a virtual reality setup, rats showed they could control their hippocampal activity to imagine navigating to specific locations or moving objects solely by thought.
This hippocampal activity can be sustained for extended periods, showing a rat’s capacity to focus its thoughts much like humans reliving past events or imagining new scenarios.
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.
A team from the Lee and Harris labs developed a novel system combining virtual reality and a brain-machine interface to probe the rat’s inner thoughts.
The researchers then changed the location of the goal, requiring the animal to produce activity patterns associated with the new location.
They found that, like humans, animals can think about places and objects that aren’t right in front of them, using their thoughts to imagine walking to a location or moving a remote object to a specific spot.
Like humans, when rodents experience places and events, specific neural activity patterns are activated in the hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for spatial memory. The new study finds rats can voluntarily generate these same activity patterns and do so to recall remote locations distant from their current position.
“The rat can indeed activate the representation of places in the environment without going there,” says Chongxi Lai, a postdoc in the Harris and Lee Labs and first author of a paper describing the new findings. “Even if his physical body is fixed, his spatial thoughts can go to a very remote location.”