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An African rat. Rats can learn rules and apply them to new situations, an ability which is thought to be a keystone of human thought, according to a study released Thursday.

Rats can learn rules and apply them to new situations, an ability which is thought to be a keystone of human thought, according to a study released Thursday.

Toddlers, primates and even birds have been known to solve problems by applying rules learned from experience in a new context, but some scientists have argued that other non-primates lack this rudimentary skill.

But in a paper in the journal Science, British researchers at University College London and Oxford University reported that rats also have some capacity for abstract thought.

The researchers exposed the rats to three-part sequences of either visual or auditory cues and paired certain sequences with food but not with others.

In the first experiment, three groups of rats were conditioned to have a Pavlovian response to a certain sequence of stimuli involving light and darkness, following an ABA, AAB or BAA pattern, where A was light, and B was darkness.

One group of rats got food every time the ABA pattern was used, another got food with the AAB pattern, and the third got chow with the BAA sequence.

Each group also received trials with the other sequences but without any food at the end of it. The experiment was run multiple times over a number of days, and by the end of the experiment the rats were able to discriminate among the sequences.

The investigators found that the animals were quicker to search their troughs for food during the sequences that they had come to associate with food.

In a second experiment, the researchers trained the rats to expect food using a series of auditory cues that followed an ABA sequence. Then they altered the cues by changing the frequency of the tones, but kept the pattern the same.

Even with the unfamiliar cues, the rats appeared to anticipate food when the high and low tones followed the established ABA pattern, judging by how quickly they went to check out their troughs.

In other words, the animals seemed to be distinguishing the patterns they were hearing according to the rules they had learned.

“They have an expectation for food based on patterns of events that have unfolded before,” said Robin Murphy, associate professor of psychology at University College London, and one of the authors of the paper.

“It shows they are able to do some complex abstraction. ”

Finally, the researchers re-ran the earlier experiment with the visual cues, but this time without providing any reinforcement in the way of food. The rats still applied the rule they had learned, responding to the sequence they had previously associated with food.

© 2008 AFP
http://www.physorg. com/news12584708 6.html