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Neuroscience: The rat pack

Nature volume 465, pages 282–283 (2010)Cite this article

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Studying primates is the only way to understand human cognition — or so neuroscientists thought. But there may be much to learn from rats and mice, finds Alison Abbott.

Anne Churchland had little time for rats. In the course of 13 years' work on decision-making in monkeys, she had never questioned that primate studies were the only way to understand the neurobiology of human cognition. Her work in the lab of Michael Shadlen at the University of Washington, Seattle, had monkeys watch moving dots flitting about on a screen until the animals indicated, with a flick of their eyes, the direction in which most of the dots were going. She recorded from single brain neurons as the monkeys slowly made sense of this 'fuzzy' information — the sort of sophisticated experiment that she did not think was possible in rodents.

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  1. Alison Abbott
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See Editorial, page 267 .

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Antony Zador's homepage

Zachary Mainen's homepage

Carlos Brody's homepage

Mike Shadlen's homepage

Daniel Salzman's homepage

Daeyeol Lee's homepage

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Abbott, A. Neuroscience: The rat pack. Nature 465, 282–283 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/465282a

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