2024-12-03
15 分钟You're listening to shortwave from npr.
Hey, shortwavers.
Regina Barber here.
And today our story starts with a rat scientist.
You know, I know we're not a big rat and they're not little humans, but at a basic level, they have mostly all the same, all the same brain areas.
Neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin and plasticity kind of fertilizers that we look at.
All of that is in a rat brain.
That's Kelly Lambert.
She's a professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Richmond.
And a while ago, this colleague of hers, a cognitive scientist who's into robotics and design, reached out with kind of a weird question.
She sent an email one night.
Kelly, can you teach a rat to drive a car?
And I consider myself a serious minded neuroscientist.
So my initial response was, why would I want to do that?
But then she reconsidered.
Once you start thinking about teaching a rat to drive a car, you can't not think about it.
You can't stop thinking about it.
Fast forward to a couple years later.
Guess what this is.
If you guessed that's the sound of a rat driving a tiny car, you're right.