4 ms·

They mentioned this in the 3rd paragraph: "This temporal firing phenomenon is well documented in certain brain areas of rats, but the new study and others sugge

They mentioned this in the 3rd paragraph: "This temporal firing phenomenon is well documented in certain brain areas of rats, but the new study and others suggest it might be far more widespread in mammalian brains."

sdenton4 5y ago
Hilarious. We shouldn't trust rat/mouse studies, but it's typically because the mice are way LESS complicated than humans. I would expect complicated behavior in mice to be treated as a lower bound for the complexity in humans. (but what do i know, i'm just a monkey.)
- eloff 5y ago
  There are lots of animals that can beat us at specific neural tasks. So I don't think it's helpful to think in those terms. For example, our visual short term memory is bested by chimpanzees, at least on certain tasks used to measure it across both chimps and humans. Lowly mice likely have better olfactory capabilities than us. It wouldn't surprise me if their brains can handle some very specific things better than we do.
  - smegger001 5y ago
    maybe, humans have great olfactory sensitivity and can rival dogs with some smells, but our nose is to far from the ground to be useful for many tasks and in-turn leads to lack of use and we kind of ignore it and generally don't get how to use it https://www.livescience.com/59070-human-sense-of-smell-sensitive-as-dogs.html https://www.livescience.com/59070-human-sense-of-smell-sensi...
  - trhway 5y ago
    >There are lots of animals that can beat us at specific neural tasks. anecdotally - in front of us a woman with a dog is leaving the dog park, and the dog pulls in the opposite direction that the woman tries to go, and that goes for a few seconds until the woman "Oh!, you're right, today we parked there" and follows the dog. And on 2 occasions spread in time and space i saw a racoon confidently crossing an intensive traffic boulevard (once it was Page Mill in Palo Alto and another was Geary in SF. The Geary was around 6-7pm, getting dark, high traffic, such crossing presents some cognitive challenge even for humans) following the basic procedure we are taught in childhood - check for traffic (and the racoons were checking for the correct direction), wait for the sufficient opening, cross to the middle, check and wait again, cross.
    - smegger001 5y ago
      as a kid i had a cat that would look both ways before crossing the street.
    - lobocinza 5y ago
      I saw many times straw dogs waiting for the semaphore to go green and then walking in the pedestrian crossing when most humans weren't.

sdenton4 5y ago

Hilarious. We shouldn't trust rat/mouse studies, but it's typically because the mice are way LESS complicated than humans. I would expect complicated behavior in mice to be treated as a lower bound for the complexity in humans. (but what do i know, i'm just a monkey.)

eloff 5y ago
There are lots of animals that can beat us at specific neural tasks. So I don't think it's helpful to think in those terms. For example, our visual short term memory is bested by chimpanzees, at least on certain tasks used to measure it across both chimps and humans. Lowly mice likely have better olfactory capabilities than us. It wouldn't surprise me if their brains can handle some very specific things better than we do.
- smegger001 5y ago
  maybe, humans have great olfactory sensitivity and can rival dogs with some smells, but our nose is to far from the ground to be useful for many tasks and in-turn leads to lack of use and we kind of ignore it and generally don't get how to use it https://www.livescience.com/59070-human-sense-of-smell-sensitive-as-dogs.html https://www.livescience.com/59070-human-sense-of-smell-sensi...
- trhway 5y ago
  >There are lots of animals that can beat us at specific neural tasks. anecdotally - in front of us a woman with a dog is leaving the dog park, and the dog pulls in the opposite direction that the woman tries to go, and that goes for a few seconds until the woman "Oh!, you're right, today we parked there" and follows the dog. And on 2 occasions spread in time and space i saw a racoon confidently crossing an intensive traffic boulevard (once it was Page Mill in Palo Alto and another was Geary in SF. The Geary was around 6-7pm, getting dark, high traffic, such crossing presents some cognitive challenge even for humans) following the basic procedure we are taught in childhood - check for traffic (and the racoons were checking for the correct direction), wait for the sufficient opening, cross to the middle, check and wait again, cross.
  - smegger001 5y ago
    as a kid i had a cat that would look both ways before crossing the street.
  - lobocinza 5y ago
    I saw many times straw dogs waiting for the semaphore to go green and then walking in the pedestrian crossing when most humans weren't.