Some scientists have succeeded in creating friendship between mice in a laboratory and this may have positive implications for treating depression.
The discovery is certainly disturbing, not only for the means used, but especially for the type of result obtained. It seems in fact that “friendship”, or at least a strong impulse to socialization, can be reproduced in the laboratory. Even if only on animals (at least for the moment).
The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience and were observed, among others, by neurobiologists at Northwestern University, in Evanston, a city near Chicago, Illinois.
What exactly happened?
How did the scientists recreate the friendship in the lab
By activating a neural implant in contact with the skulls of some mice, the scientists managed to create a synthetic friendship between rodents. That disappeared as soon as the sinister prosthesis was deactivated. In other words, the socialization impulse of the lab animals was somehow connected to a switch, which could be turned on (friendly mice) or off (mice indifferent to each other).
The fact that the chip can be operated remotely is a discriminating feature, because it allows Northwestern engineers to keep an eye on the guinea pigs even when they are left more free, so as to replicate behavioral patterns closer to those that would be observed in the wild.
Another aspect concerns the ability to charge the implant via a wireless system. This excludes the need to replace the mechanism every time the batteries are discharged, with implicit and not unpleasant consequences for the test subjects.
What (positive) implications can the experiment have on research
Obviously, such research, regardless of the ethical conclusions that each of us may reach (and which fall under the infinitely discussed topic of animal testing), was not carried out to satisfy the sadism of engineers.
The implications in fact range from surgery to neurology. And they concern, for example, the benefits that a brain implant, together with electrostimulation, can have with respect to the treatment of depression, naturally in humans. Not only that. The technology developed by North American engineers could help patients to whom a gastric or cardiac pacemaker has been applied, “to reduce the burden of long-term use within the body,” stresses one of the authors of the study.
Among the experiments that can open new horizons for research, the one on the unknown sixth sense of men. And speaking of interfaces between computer and human brain, there is the software able to write thoughts.
Giuseppe Giordano