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Thursday, January 12, 2017

NPR: "Flipping A Switch In The Brain Turns Lab Rodents Into Killer Mice"

But would a full moon work? From the article:
     The mice became aggressive predators when two sets of neurons in the amygdala were activated with laser light, a team reported Thursday in the journal Cell.
     "The animals become very efficient in hunting," says Ivan de Araujo, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University and an associate fellow at The John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven. "They pursue the prey [a live cricket] faster and they are more capable of capturing and killing it."
     Activating the neurons even caused the mice to attack inanimate objects, including sticks, bottle caps and an insectlike toy. "The animals intensively bite the toy and use their forepaws in an attempt to kill it," De Araujo says.
     But the aggressive behavior is reserved for prey. Mice didn't attack each other, even when both sets of neurons were activated.
So r-selected creatures can also act predatory with the right neurological stimulus.

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