# Rats in mazes
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 17, 2015, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071 "2015-01-17T16:22:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2015, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/1 "2015-01-17T16:22:48Z")
In finding their way out of mazes, do rats use their own stink trail to eliminate paths they’ve already tried?
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### Author:  [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/2 "2015-01-17T18:04:11Z")
I don’t know exactly how they use scents in maze tests, but I do know that rats do use odors to find their way around and, in addition to their own stink, they also mark trails with small drops of urine. If you aren’t careful with your maze test, you may find that the rats are following scent trails instead of whatever training method you are trying to get them to learn.
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2015, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/3 "2015-01-17T18:59:02Z")
[QUOTE=Richard Feynman]
For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on – with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.
The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.
He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.
[/QUOTE]
[http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo\_cult.html](http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html)
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2015, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/4 "2015-01-17T19:00:31Z")
Sorry the formatting screwed up. I did this on my phone and it won’t even let me edit. 😕
EDIT: Okay, I figured it out… I think. 🙂
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/5 "2015-01-17T19:04:49Z")
Also, FYI, Feynman was a physicist, not a rat psychologist, and was also repeating that story from memory, which might have been faulty. But it’s what I think of whenever rat maze studies are mentioned.
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### Author:  [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/6 "2015-01-17T19:08:52Z")
Rats have “place cells” that help them track their location.
The rat develops a neural map of their environment and place cells fire according to whether the rat is in that location.
Here’s an article:
> **[You Are Here: Mapping The World With Neurons - Knowing Neurons](https://knowingneurons.com/blog/2013/04/08/you-are-here-mapping-the-world-with-neurons/)**
>
> “You are here.” It’s the phrase that you’ll find on almost any map, punctuated with the ubiquitous oversized arrow. It
This article is about other neurons that are part of the navigation process also, it doesn’t explain the “how”, but is a piece of the puzzle:
> **[Neurons in hippocampal afferent zones of rat striatum parse routes into...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15078566/)**
>
> Hippocampal 'place' neurons discharge when rats occupy specific regions within an environment. This finding is a cornerstone of the theory of the hippocampus as a cognitive map of space. But for navigation, representations of current position must be...
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/7 "2015-01-17T20:45:42Z")
This excerpt from **RaftPeople** ’s first link conjures up some interesting imagery:
> [@](#):
>
> In the March 2013 issue of Nature Neuroscience, however, researchers in the laboratory of Mark Schnitzer at Stanford University demonstrated a tiny (2 gram) microscope that could be mounted directly on a mouse’s head so that the mouse could move freely around a maze. The Schnitzer lab used a genetically modified mouse in which neurons fluoresce whenever they become activated, which allowed them to optically record the activity of place cells while the mouse explored a maze. This paper confirmed that a small group of neurons in the hippocampus form a neural map of the external world and that each point in space is represented by only a few neurons.
I want to be genetically modified so my neurons fluoresce whenever they become activated!
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### Author:  [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-mazes/710071/8 "2015-01-18T01:06:42Z")
> [@Senegoid](#):
>
> This excerpt from **RaftPeople** ’s first link conjures up some interesting imagery:
>
> I want to be genetically modified so my neurons fluoresce whenever they become activated!
You would be popular at a rave!