New discovery: Cockroaches also know learning!

Japanese scientists have just published an interesting finding: cockroaches also have memory and can be taught to produce saliva in the same way dogs do in ' conditioned reflexes ' experiments. Experts say this finding will give them a chance to learn more about the functioning of the human brain.

So far, such training cases can only happen to those with memory and learning ability, and salivary reflexes in this new study are only proven in dogs and humans. only But now, cockroaches have proved it to be inferior to dogs in this respect.

In an article in the journal Public Library of Science (USA), experts say they hope to study more about the human brain by discovering what is happening in the brain much simpler than cockroaches.

Professor Makoto Mizunami, of Tohoku University, said: 'Understanding the cognitive mechanism in the brain of insects can help us better understand the functions of the human brain'. He emphasized: 'There are many, many similarities'.

In the study, every time they fed cockroaches to a sugar solution, the scientists gave them a characteristic smell. Some time later, they found that every time they smelled, they released saliva even though they were not fed.

Test results show that cockroaches can also be taught to perform
conditional reflections like dogs (Photo: abdn.ac.uk)

Meanwhile, a group of other cockroaches were also fed a sugar solution but did not include the aforementioned smell, and then, when exposed to that odor, they did not produce any more saliva. Mr. Mizunami commented: 'Certainly cockroaches are capable of receiving and remembering information'. This case is very similar to the same experiment for dogs.

At the end of the 19th century, Russian doctor Ivan Petrovich Pavlov studied a phenomenon in dogs that is now known as 'conditioned reflexes'.

The team hopes that part of the research on cockroach brain will be applied to humans.(Photo: Reuters)

In his research, Pavlov told his dog owners when they brought food for dogs to ring the bell first. After a month, when the dog was ready to eat, the farmers just need to shake the bell, the dogs would fight to run to the food trough to wait.

Pavlov thinks this is a kind of reaction to external stimulation, and he calls it the " conditioned reflex " of animals.

But even today, though science has made tremendous progress, researchers still know very little about the mammalian brain and the neural mechanism of the brain, because the field is so complicated.

Professor Mizunami said that in the future, his group will definitely discover what happened in the cockroach's brain."In the brain of cockroaches, there are countless neurons and we have to find out which cells actually play a role in determining cognitive ability," he said.

On the prospect of future research, he said optimistically: 'Understanding a mechanism to specifically identify brain activity in cognitive processes is very important. We hope that at least part of the research results will be applied to humans'.

The above study by Professor Mizunami and colleagues has just been published in the electronic edition of the journal Public Library of Science, June 13, 2007.

Quang Thinh

According to Reuters, Public Library of Science, VNN