Overcoming Instincts: Fear Versus Foraging
We instinctively know how to keep ourselves safe and so do other animals, according to neuroscientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. University of Washington researcher Jeansok Kim demonstrates that rats weigh their odds of safely retrieving food pellets placed at varying distances from a perceived predator. Stay or forage might seem obvious but rats need to get out and find food and how do they decide whether it's safe to leave the nest was the focus of Kim and co-author June-Seek Choi, a visiting professor in the UW psychology department from Korea University. They studied how the amygdala, an important brain area for perceiving and reacting to fear, was involved in the rats' decisions to risk their safety for food. read more