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This week Zach and Kelly talk about how the smell of coffee changes gene expression and protein production in rat brains, and discuss a study that hooked rat brains up to one another so the rats could share information and perform tasks together.
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Coffee on the brain
Rat brain-to-brain interface
Interesting stuff! I was interested in how accurate the computer program was in the second study, but I didn’t see any information on that in a quick skim of the paper. Here’s an amusing anecdote about rodents and computers: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/GRGs-Worst-Production-Failure.aspx
While I’m not sure if the method of stressing rats in a small amount of water so they cannot sleep is a common method for laboratory mice stressing I do know that this was a common torture device used by the Stasi and is a well known non-permanently damaging torture technique.
new episodes soon please?
Sooo long since the last episode . . . ; (