As humans, we live in our thoughts: from pondering what to make for dinner to daydreaming about our last beach vacation. Now, researchers at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus have found that animals also possess an imagination.
A team from the Lee and Harris labs developed a novel system combining virtual reality and a brain-machine interface to probe a rat’s inner thoughts.
They found that, like humans, animals can think about places and objects that aren’t right in front of them, using their thoughts to imagine walking to a location or moving a remote object to a specific spot.
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