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 Research & Giving News Article  In a study recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers reported on their study of rats that had been left to form social hierarchies in a semi-natural setting, known as a “visible burrow system.” In each experiment, four males and two females were released into the burrow, and within days the males had established social positions – one male became dominant and attracted the females, while the other three males became subordinate to him. Two weeks later, the high-status animals were found to have around 30% more neurons in their brains’ hippocampus – a region associated with learning and memory – than they had before, and these neurons survived longer than new ones typically do in this part of the brain. The strain of rat that Gould and Kozorovitskiy used does not generally form social hierarchies when housed in standard laboratory cages. However, the more naturalistic tunnel setting encouraged individual behavioral expression. The researchers suggest that studying rats in burrows is likely to yield information much more relevant to human behavior and disease than tests utilizing standard laboratory cages. Most laboratory protocols suppress individual differences between test animals, so their behavior is often quite different from what it would be in nature. |
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