(The ‘predator’ shadow has been enhanced for visibility). Scientists evoke the escape response in a mouse. “Having drones - that would also be very nice,” says Dario Campagner, a researcher in Branco’s lab. And his colleagues have more ideas - cutting the disc into a wingspan shape, for instance. This is a rapid decision-making process that draws on sensory information, previous experience and instinct.īranco, a neuroscientist at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London, has wondered about installing a taxidermied owl on a zip wire to create a more realistic experience. Instead, it is the work of neuroscientists in Tiago Branco’s lab, who have rigged up a plastic disc on a lever to provoke, and thereby study, the mouse’s escape behaviour. But the shadow wasn’t cast by a predator. Neurons in its midbrain start to fire, sensing the threat of a potential predator, and a cascade of activity in an adjacent region orders its body to choose a response - freeze to the spot in the hope of going undetected, or run for shelter, in this case a red acetate box stationed nearby.įrom the mouse’s perspective, this is life or death. In a split second, the mouse’s brain whirs with activity. In a dimly lit laboratory in London, a brown mouse explores a circular tabletop, sniffing as it ambles about.
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