![]() When the mice or the humans reported hearing a cue that was not actually played, the event was noted as a hallucination-like percept (HALIP).Ĭertain permutations of this basic experiment yielded interesting results: For instance, both mice and humans reported more HALIPs when the cues were played at a higher frequency, which the researchers think is due to a heightened expectation of hearing signals. The 220 people who participated in the study also played a version of the game in which they were asked to click their responses with a cursor, indicating if they thought they had heard a sound. The mice learned to poke their noses into ports to report whether or not they’d heard the cue, and were given water rewards when they were correct. ![]() To prepare for the experiment, Schmack and her colleagues trained dozens of mice to operate a computer game that played specific auditory cues, which varied in volume, against a background of messy noise. “The big challenge we are addressing here is really bringing this together by doing the same thing, both in mice and in humans, and using a model of hallucinations to bridge the subjective experience of hallucinations with the neurobiology, which we can study in mice,” Schmack said in a call. However, mice can undergo a wider array of neurobiological tests-in this study’s case, taking ketamine doses or dopamine boosts-that are logistically and ethically problematic to conduct in humans. Humans can speak about their subjective experiences, while mice have limited communication, which makes humans better subjects for psychiatric researchers. Schmack, Kepecs, and their colleagues opted to model hallucinations in humans and mice to combine the benefits of research with both species.
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