Dowbrigade

Brain biologist Joe Tsien got famous six years ago for creating a genetically
engineered ‘’smart mouse" with an improved memory. But for
all his success, he felt troubled: He had altered memory, but he
still
did not know what exactly memory was

In research released online yesterday in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, Tsien, of Boston University, and colleagues recorded
activity in mouse brains as the animals went through experiences as startling
as the plummet in the Tower of Terror.

The mice felt the sudden cold gust of air that for them could mean an
owl attack; they went through the shaking of an ersatz earthquake; and
they felt the cookie jar holding them drop precipitously, like a plunging
elevator.

If borne out, the work could be one step toward a major goal of modern
neuroscience: understanding the magic of how chemical and electrical
activity in the brain is transformed into memories — or thoughts, or
feelings, or images — in our minds.

from the
Boston Globe

Now let us get this straight….They stick a ton of electrodes directly
into the brains of these cute little mice, and then they scare the begeezus
out of them while scientists watch the meters jump. If that doesn’t constitute
cruelty to animals, what does? Where are Suzanne Sommers and Brigit Bardot
on
this one? PETA?

As to the three carefully conceived "scare tests," the first two make
sense, in a Stuart Little sort of way. Although surprise owl attacks
and earthquakes can be a bitch, and certainly form part of the mouse
eco-system and natural occurrences they have evolved to need warning
of, we have to question the efficacy of a "cold gust of air" or "shaken
mouse
syndrome" to simulate them.

As to the "cookie jar" test, well, what can
we say. Getting trapped in a cookie jar must be a rare, though theoretically
possible (and picturesque) travail for the evolutionarily average
mouse, but using it to simulate being trapped in an out-of-control,
plummeting elevator goes
beyond the pale of experimental science, as we know it.

Sometimes the obfuscation and self-aggrandization of science is incredible.  Any
fool knows how to scare the shit out of a mouse.  Here, kitty…..