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Rats have an imagination, new research finds
- isaacfrond 3y agotl;dr The labs developed a system that could measure neural activity and translate what it meant. The system uses a brain-machine interface (BMI), which provides a direct connection between brain activity and an external device. In the team's system, the BMI produces a connection between the electrical activity in the rat's hippocampus and its position in a 360-degree virtual reality arena. The hippocampus stores mental maps of the world involved in recalling past events and imagining future scenarios. Memory recall involves the generation of specific hippocampal activity patterns related to places and events. But no one knew whether animals could voluntarily control this activity. The BMI allows the researchers to test whether a rat can activate hippocampal activity to just think about a location in the arena without physically going there—essentially, detecting if the animal is able to imagine going to the location.