What do you see when you look in the mirror? Perhaps you see a complex shape that you immediately recognize as yourself. Now, a team of researchers has discovered that mice appear to be able to do the same thing.
that’s right. Mice may now join a small cadre of mammals that have passed the so-called mirror test, suggesting they can tell the difference between their own reflections and the vision of other mice. Other mammals that have shown “mirror-induced self-directed behavior,” as it is known, include humans, great apes, some monkeys, dolphins, and elephants.researcher published Details of the experiments using mice and mirrors are published today in the journal Neuron.
“For example, to form episodic memories of everyday life events, the brain forms and stores information about where, what, when, and by whom. The most important element is self-information, or status.” says neuroscientist Takashi Kitamura. in a Cell, a researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and co-author of the study. release. “Researchers typically investigate how the brain encodes or recognizes others, but aspects of self-information are unclear.”
To test whether mice could recognize themselves, researchers marked the foreheads of black-furred mice with white ink and then released them into a box with a mirror on one side. The mice were grooming themselves in the mirror, apparently to remove ink stains from their faces. If the white ink was a small speck, or if it was replaced with black ink that blended into the fur, the mice would not groom themselves in front of the mirror.
Furthermore, mice that were not accustomed to looking in the mirror did not groom their heads before the test. “For mice to pass the mirror test, they needed an important external sensory cue. A large amount of ink must be applied to the mouse’s head. The tactile stimulation from the ink then causes the animal to somehow mirror “We can now detect ink above the head through its reflection,” lead author Jun Yokose, a researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said in a release. “Neither chimpanzees nor humans need extra sensory stimulation.”
Although the animals could clearly see that there was something in their heads, this self-awareness did not necessarily mean that the animals were “self-aware” in a deeper sense. As Gizmodo found out, previously reportedMirror experiments are not a way to truly understand animal intelligence or psychological complexity.
The researchers used gene expression mapping to identify groups of neurons in the rodent ventral hippocampus that were activated in mice that exhibited self-awareness. When these neurons stopped functioning in a laboratory environment, the mice no longer repeated the grooming behavior. The same neurons were activated when the mice viewed other mice with the same physical characteristics, but not when they viewed mice with different colored fur.
The researchers also found that mice that were socially isolated after weaning, meaning they had no chance to learn socially, were less likely to remove the ink from their foreheads. The same was true for black-furred mice raised alongside white-furred mice. These findings suggested to the researchers that the mice needed to be raised with similar-looking mice in order to exhibit self-aware behavior.
“This is consistent with previous humanities literature showing that some hippocampal cells are activated not only when looking at oneself, but also when looking at a familiar person, such as a parent. ” said Kitamura.
Non-mammalian species have also shown mirror-guided self-directed behavior when experiments are designed. Eurasian magpie, Scheduled to be renamed soon Clark’s Nutcracker and Sweeping Bella also demonstrate self-identification.
The research team now wants to know whether mice can recognize themselves without tactile stimulation, a large ink blot on their foreheads.That research may include: Similar face-changing filters Even users of apps like TikTok and Instagram. They will also study rodent brains to better understand how animals make sense of what they see and how they distinguish themselves from other animals. It’s a schedule.
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