In other words, the agency asked that we try to estimate the lorcaserin concentration in the human brain as compared to the rat brain.
Nerves from a part of the rat brain known as the basal forebrain are thought to secrete the chemical acetylcholine into the brain's main vision center, also called the primary visual cortex, reinforcing connections that were recently active.
MSN: Goggle-wearing rats show link between learning, rewards
In 1986 Kevin Kinsella, a venture capitalist, spotted a neuroscience paper about the olfactory cortex of a rat's brain.
The encoder rat's brain signals then became clearer, giving the decoder a greater chance of interpreting the message correctly, Prof Nicolelis noted.
In their experiments, an electrical current was sent to the limbic system of a rat's brain whenever it moved to a certain area of its cage.
Previous research has shown that visual and tactile information can be fed into and out of a rat's brain using microscopic electrodes implanted in the cortex -- most recently when the animals learnt to "feel" invisible infrared radiation.
Once this rat pressed the correct lever, its brain activity was delivered as electrical stimulation into the brain of the second rat - designated the "decoder".
Electrodes picked up the brain activity of the first rat, the "encoder", and fed it over the internet into the brain of its partner, the "decoder", which had the same levers in its cage but received no visual cues about which one to press.
He then took brain stem cells from another rat and grew part of the spinal cord on a polymer scaffold.
The team members then conducted trials to determine how well the decoder animal could decipher the brain input from the encoder rat to choose the correct lever.
Electrodes attached to the brain of a host "encoder" rat in Brazil processed the motor-oriented mental activity for a desired behavior, such as pressing a lever on cue, and converted it into a signal that was then received by a "decoder" rat as far away as Duke's US campus.
"We saw that when the decoder rat committed an error, the encoder basically changed both its brain function and behaviour to make it easier for its partner to get it right, " he said.
In order to receive the reward, the decoder rat would have to rely on the cue transmitted from the encoder via the brain-to-brain interface.
Each rat had, in effect, grown a new nervous system which ran from the motor cortexes of its brain, down its spinal column, past the breaks in its spine and into its back legs.
ECONOMIST: An experiment on rats brings hope to the paralysed
应用推荐