Rats Dream About the Future — Future Food
LONDON, June 26 (UPI) — Turns out, we have something in common with rats, after all. We both dream of cheese, sort of.
According to researchers at University College London, rats dream about the future and the routes they might take to forbidden foods. Travel and food — rats may be more sophisticated then they get credit for.
To get an idea of where rodent minds wander during down time, scientists strapped a handful of rats to electrodes. The researchers first monitored the rats’ brain activity as they looked at food in an unreachable chamber. Next, they monitored the rats as they rested in a separate room. Finally, the researchers allowed the rats (still strapped to the electrodes) to walk to the food.
[one_fourth]
[/one_fourth][three_fourth_last]
When they compared the areas of the brain stimulated during each phase, they found the last two activities, dreaming and walking, appeared most similar — suggesting the animals dream about walking uncharted paths to hidden snacks.
“During exploration, mammals rapidly form a map of the environment in their hippocampus,” lead researcher Hugo Spiers, a professor of experimental psychology at UCL, explained in a press release. “During sleep or rest, the hippocampus replays journeys through this map which may help strengthen the memory.”
Spiers is senior author of a new paper on the findings, published this week in the journal eLife.
“It has been speculated that such replay might form the content of dreams,” Spiers added. “Whether or not rats experience this brain activity as dreams is still unclear, as we would need to ask them to be sure!”
What is clear is that the hippocampus can piece together pictures of things and places yet to be. Researchers say the findings may explain why human patients with damage to the hippocampus often have difficulty imagining the future.
“What’s really interesting is that the hippocampus is normally thought of as being important for memory, with place cells storing details about locations you’ve visited,” said co-lead author Freyja Olafsdottir. “What’s surprising here is that we see the hippocampus planning for the future, actually rehearsing totally novel journeys that the animals need to take in order to reach the food.”
