Rats on Drugs
As of now in class, the human brain I believe we have all learned, truly is an incredible thing. After viewing the Mouse Party online game/experiment, the effects of drugs on rats alone is truly incredible seeing as what really goes on. I thought it would be an interesting idea to research some videos and experiments about what happens in real life when rats are on drugs. In the video I watched, there were three rats. One rat was injected with marijuana, another rat was injected with cocaine, and the third rat was injected with saline, which is a salt water solution. Upon viewing the video, the scientists noticed that each rat reacted differently. The marijuana rat was acting quite mellow, the cocaine rat was fidgety and trying to escape, and the saline rat was acting completely normal. All of these rats were specially trained to count time. In an experiment, the rat would have to press a lever after 12 seconds, no more and no less, and would receive a food pellet if they timed it correctly. They received nothing if timed incorrectly. The saline rat was able to press the lever within the correct time frame and therefore, received a pellet. The drugged rats however faced complications. Time seemed to go by much quicker for the cocaine rat and they pressed the lever after only eight seconds. For the marijuana rat, however, time drifted on by and after 16 seconds, they pressed the lever. This experiment can conclude that various drugs affect brain activity and ones ability to tell time.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLlIdEWco4M
Funny Picture I thought people may enjoy :) msin374l.jpg (click on link)
Funny Picture I thought people may enjoy :) msin374l.jpg (click on link)
I found it interesting that nearly all of the drugs on 'Mouse Party' have medicinal origins. I didn't understand why until it explained what effect they have on the brain . . . it makes sense that many of those drugs were/are used as painkillers.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about 'the brain' is true, as well. It is so, so, incredibly complex. I remember reading a fact about "there is no known thing that is more complex or more of an enigma than the human brain." Crazy stuff!
This is a pretty interesting experiment. I know that drugs can change your perception of reality and how you see things, but I didn't think about how they would effect your perception of time. It would be interesting to see how other drugs effect your perception of time, such as heroin or LSD. This reminds me of another experiment I saw once where the people saw the effect of different drugs on a spiders ability to construct a web. I guess I didn't know that these drugs effect so much of our brain.
ReplyDeleteI really found it interesting how rats were affected just like people with these drugs. I'm curious as to what would happen if we tried it on frogs or other animals. Would they react differently. I remember doing an experiment in biology sophmore year where we took a water flee and gave it some caffine, it moved so fast it was funny but I wanna know if maybe trying a different animal may have had a similar result.
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