Neuroscientists at Yale University published a paper [On Jan. 12, 2017,] in the journal Cell showing how they could trigger a mouse’s predatory instincts with a clever genetic trick. Key word: instinct. They’re not engineering mice to be mindless killers, roaming cages in search of their next target. They’re prompting the mice to do something they already do in the wild: hunt.
And yes, they did turn the mice into unusually efficient hunters,…[b]ut it’s a totally natural instinct that wild mice have to have in order to survive—we just don’t normally observe it, because we see mice in cages chowing on food pellets.
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One of the most powerful, technologically-advanced tools in the neurobiology arsenal is a technique [called optogenetics, which], when described broadly, sounds a lot like mind-control.
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To use optogenetics to activate a mouse’s predatory instinct is as simple as identifying a set of neurons that are sufficient to trigger the predatory behavior. This helps scientists understand how the brain controls hunting. It doesn’t make mice into zombies.
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