Scores of animals exist in scientific laboratories for the purpose of serving as our proxies, their cortices mapped and their flu responses studied so scientists can figure out how humans work. But in many cases, there’s little agreement between their functions and ours, and scientists need to figure out how to draw useful comparisons. To get a better handle on this, brain researchers had humans and monkeys watch “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” inside an MRI machine.
The goal was to monitor how both creatures’ brains responded to the same stimulus, tracking correlated activity even if it was centered in different brain areas. The idea is that seeing hands and faces should spark similar activity patterns in both species, even if the neurons fire in anatomically different locations.
via Pop Sci
February 6, 2012
