Of Mice and Men. The Imagination capacities of Rodents and Chess Masters

Send us Fan MailAn article captured my attention recently: ‘Rat race: rodents use imagination to navigate their environment’.The article in the Guardian, Friday third November, 2023, reported findings from a research study from the Howard Hughes medical Institute, Maryland, USA. The researchers claimed that the study is the first to show animals can flexibly activate the brain’s  representations of places distant from its current location. The technicalities of the research follows classic rat- based studies in which the rodents were monitored for learning skills. In this case the skills required accessing information of previous experiences stored in the hippocampus. One of the researchers stated “what is clear is that the rats can control neuronal activity of the hippocampus neurons to earn a reward”.For better or for worse, I accessed my own hippocampus neurons and began thinking about the memory skills of chess players. There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence reporting the skills of top chess players in assimilating data and accessing it in rather the way the rats were described as recalling information previously stored in a brain location associated with memory ...Reference detailsThe article can be found in the current edition of the Science journal under the title ‘Volitional activation of remote, place representations with a hippocampal brain – machine interface’ , Nov, 2023, Vol382, pp566-573, lead author Changxi Laihttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh5206TRStay up-to-date with all of Tudor's podcasts, blogs and current affairs commentary by signing up to our newsletter! Email [email protected] to sign up!Follow Tudor on Twitter @TudortweetFollow Tudor's blogs:everydaycreativity.ukleaderswedeserve.wordpress.com