Do animate being bang how long a 2d is , or how much time has go past ? That ’s a bit of an opened question , but we may be slightly secretive to an solution .
A discipline published in the journalNature Neurosciencesuggests the strongest grounds yet that creature may indeed be able to estimate the passageway of time . The inquiry was guide by Daniel Dombeck and James Heys from Northwestern University in Illinois .
" Does your dog know that it took you twice as long to get its food as it take yesterday ? There was n’t a honest answer for that before , " Dombeck aver in astatement . " This is one of the most convincing experiment to show that animals really do have an explicit histrionics of sentence in their brainiac when they are challenged to measure out a metre interval . "
To make their determination , the researchers placed a mouse on a physical salt mine in front of a virtual realism CRT screen . To pull in a payoff , the mouse was required to work down a practical hall , hold off at a practical door for six second base until it opened , and then lapse through it . This was called the virtual “ door stop ” task .
However , once the mouse was used to this scenario , the research worker made the door unseeable but keep textures on the floor so the mouse still knew where the door was . And , when the mouse ran down the hallway , it still waited for six seconds outside the door – even though it was n’t there .
" The crucial point here is that the black eye does n’t roll in the hay when the room access is open or close because it ’s invisible , " said Heys . " The only way he can figure out this task expeditiously is by using his brain ’s internal good sense of time . "
Dombeck and Heys focused on a part of the brain know as themedial entorhinal cortexfor the experiment , which is tie in with memory and piloting . And by imaging the mouse ’s brain activity , the squad were able to catch the nerve cell fire in its brain .
This showed them that when the mouse run away down the raceway , it ’s jail cell that controlled especial encryption fired . But when it stopped at the threshold , those cells turned off and new cell turn on , which Dombeck said was “ a big surprise and a new uncovering . ”
This has broader implications too , such as read Alzheimer ’s disease . It may be that people with the disease are losing basic functions in their entorhinal cortex , which could affect their memory and their sense of metre .
