(offt Don't like Auton? Have a rat drive your EV there) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2220721-scientists-have-trained-rats-to-drive-tiny-cars-to-collect-food/ Scientists have trained rats to drive tiny cars to collect food 22 October 2019 Alice Klein
[images https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/22120246/rat-car-1_edit.jpg A rat in a tiny car Rats seem to find driving relaxing / Kelly Lambert/University of Richmond videos flash ] Rats have mastered the art of driving a tiny car, suggesting that their brains are more flexible than we thought. The finding could be used to understand how learning new skills relieves stress and how neurological and psychiatric conditions affect mental capabilities. We know that rodents can learn to recognise objects, press bars and find their way around mazes. These tests are often used to study how brain conditions affect cognitive function, but they only capture a narrow window of animal cognition, says Kelly Lambert at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Lambert and her colleagues wondered if rats could learn the more sophisticated task of operating a moving vehicle. They constructed a tiny car out of a clear plastic food container on wheels, with an aluminium floor and three copper bars functioning as a steering wheel. When a rat stood on the aluminium floor and gripped the copper bars with their paws, they completed an electrical circuit that propelled the car forward. Touching the left, centre or right bar steered the car in different directions. Six female and 11 male rats were trained to drive the car in rectangular arenas up to 4 square metres in size. They were rewarded with Froot Loop cereal pieces when they touched the steering bars and drove the car forward. The team encouraged the rats to advance their driving skills by placing the food rewards at increasingly distant points around the arena. “They learned to navigate the car in unique ways and engaged in steering patterns they had never used to eventually arrive at the reward,” says Lambert. Learning to drive seemed to relax the rats. The researchers assessed this by measuring levels of two hormones: corticosterone, a marker of stress, and dehydroepiandrosterone, which counteracts stress. The ratio of dehydroepiandrosterone to corticosterone in the rats’ faeces increased over the course of their driving training. This finding echoes Lambert’s previous work showing that rats become less stressed after they master difficult tasks like digging up buried food. They may get the same kind of satisfaction as we get when we perfect a new skill, she says. “In humans, we call this self-efficacy or agency.” In support of this idea, the team found that rats that drove themselves had higher dehydroepiandrosterone levels and were less stressed than rats that were driven around as passengers in remote-controlled cars. The ability of rats to drive these cars demonstrates the “neuroplasticity” of their brains, says Lambert. This refers to their ability to respond flexibly to novel challenges. “I do believe that rats are smarter than most people perceive them to be, and that most animals are smarter in unique ways than we think,” she says. Researchers could potentially replace traditional maze tests with more complex driving tasks when using rat models to study neuropsychiatric conditions, says Lambert. For example, driving tests could be used to probe the effects of Parkinson’s disease on motor skills and spatial awareness, or the effects of depression on motivation, she says. “If we use more realistic and challenging models, it may provide more meaningful data,” she says. The team is now planning follow-up experiments to understand how rats learn to drive, why it seems to reduce stress and which brain areas are involved. Journal reference: Behavioural Brain Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112309 [© newscientist.com] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/10/okay-but-can-we-teach-the-rats-to-race/ OK, But Can We Teach The Rats To Race? Oct 25, 2019 ... The researchers found that rats which lived in more enriching environments were better equipped to figure out how to steer the cars. Regardless of whether they lived in an enriched or non-enriched environment, the rats also showed lower levels of stress hormones and higher levels of hormones that counteract stress as they learned to drive. That indicates they may have been pleased with their progress ... https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_lfill,w_768,q_90/sldi3hxlxc2oyoduzzhx.jpg https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a29563243/rats-driving-cars-stress-study/ Rats Can Drive (Tiny) Cars, and Scientists Find They Actually Like It Oct 23, 2019 Scientists at the University of Richmond found that rats' stress levels go down when they get to drive little cars, so that whole rat-race myth is officially dead. The University of Richmond did a stress study involving rats that taught them how to drive little tiny rat cars, The New Scientist reported this ... https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10194202/rats-drive-electric-cars/ Rats learn to drive tiny electric cars to collect food in world-first ... RATS have learned how to drive in a US lab, according to stunned researchers. The furry creatures have been filmed driving special vehicles to collect food ... Dogs taught to drive cars in New Zealand – video ... https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/rat-in-car-1571853490.png ... https://www.google.com/search?q=Rats+learn+to+drive+tiny+electric+cars + https://www.mycentraloregon.com/2019/10/24/tesla-says-its-new-gigafactory-in-china-is-ready-for-production/ Tesla says its new Gigafactory in China is 'ready for production' 2019-10-24 The battery and electric vehicle production plant is the first of its kind for Tesla in China. 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