The contemporary research lab can offer rats cures for anything from colon cancer and diabetes to genetic blindness and hair loss. Yet, the mental well-being of modern rodents has been severely neglected.
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Whether it is the pungent smell of old cheese losing its former allure, or just the compound stress of years scrounging around in sewers to make ends meet, rats too can feel the dull ache of depression in the pit of their stomachs.
These rats don't go leaping across city streets late at night or have sprinting contests on wooden ceilings. Like depressed people, they lose interest in the world around them, shunning the bounty offered by overturned trash cans or accessible refuse rooms.
Put a twelve-year old block of blue cheese in front of such an animal and he'll hardly sniff at it before turning away and trudging off to go sit staring into nothingness.
Taking to the bottle
According to new Japanese research, peering into the bottle will offer no relief either. In a study conducted on rats they concluded that alcohol doesn't really banish bad memories, and may instead imprint them more firmly into the brain.
The researchers gave mild shocks to lab rats to condition them to fear. As a result, the rats would freeze in terror and curl up the moment they were put in their cages, Sapa reports.
Researchers then immediately injected the rats with ethanol or saline. The researchers found that rats with alcohol in their veins froze up for longer, with the fear on average lasting two weeks, compared with rats that did not receive injections, according to Sapa.
There is hope
Among all the doom and gloom though, new research is offering hope.
In research conducted in rats, scientists have found that using the anti-depressant Prozac helps restore old brain cells to a more plastic, youthful condition.
Whether rats will be able to afford regular doses of the drug is however highly doubtful. At the very least though, the study offers another good reason why you should keep your antidepressants somewhere safe and secure.
And, in a similarly interesting study, researchers report that injecting rats with human umbilical cord blood boosted the rodents' brains.
After the aged lab rats in the study received a single injection , cell proliferation in the brain increased within 24 hours and continued for at least 15 days, HealthDayNews reports.
Not quite the couch
Still, as promising as all this sounds, the options open to rats still trail those open to humans by some distance.
There is as yet, for example, no recorded cases of the successful use of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) in a rat model. (Studies suggest that CBT is the most reliable treatment of depression in humans.)
This may of course be due to the difficulty involved in getting rats to sit still. Indeed, it has been hypothesised that sitting in an environment as open and exposed as the standard psychologist's couch, may induce such mental trauma in the rat brain so as to make successful counselling impossible.
What ever happens over the next few years though, experts agree that it is more important to address the root cause of the blues. Prozac, umbilical cord blood, and maybe CBT will all help, but prevention would be a much more effective tool in the fight against rodent depression.
Which is just another way to say that, while rats have to hide away in sewers, and while life for them remains a literal "rat race" for survival, chronic stress, and then full blown depression will never be far off.
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