Signs of learning ability in mice

Male mice can produce different sounds to attract female mice. These mice also have certain brain features like the features of the human brain and the birds of the birds learning to sing at some point. They use these features to change the sound they emit.

Researcher Erich Jarvis said they found brain characteristics and behavior for learning in mice.

The research results were published in PloS ONE this month.

This finding contrasts with the earlier assumption of the 60-year-old scientist. Previously, he thought that mice had absolutely no learning characteristics."If we are not wrong, these findings will be a big boost for scientists to study diseases like autism and anxiety , " he said.

Jarvis acknowledges that these findings will be controversial because they are completely contradictory to the scientists' long-standing assumptions about mouse speech.

"This is a very important study with great findings, " said Kurt Hammerschmidt, a German expert in sound communication research at the Primate Center, who is not involved in the study. comment. He thinks that studying the pronunciation of mice can become a good model for studying the genetic foundations of language evolution.

The question is whether mice can learn to sing? To answer this question, the researchers did the experiment and found that when two male mice were placed in a cage with a female, the voices of the two male mice would be equally high in the 7-8 range. week.

Jarvis and colleagues tested 24 male mice and repeated the experiment twice to confirm the results.