IN THE ’90S, when he was a doc toral student at the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland, neuro scientist Sean Hill spent five years studying how cat brains respond to noise. At the time, researchers knew that two regions — the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain, and the thalamus, a nutlike structure near the centre did most of the work. But, when an auditory signal entered the brain through the ear, what happened, specifically? Which parts of the cortex and thalamus did the signal travel to? And in what order? The answers to such questions could help doc tors treat hearing loss in humans. So, to learn more, Hill, along with his super visor and a group of lab techs, anaesthetized cats and inserted electrodes into their brains to monitor what happened when the animals were exposed to sounds, which were piped into their ears via miniature headphones. Hill’s probe then captured the brain signals the noises generated.
The last step was to euthanize the cats and dissect their brains, which was the only way for Hill to verify where he’d put his probes. It was not a part of the study he enjoyed. He’d grown up on a family farm in Maine and had developed a reverence for all sentient life. As an under graduate student in New Hampshire, he’d experimented on pond snails, but only after ensuring that each was properly anaesthetized. “I particularly loved cats,” he says, “but I also deeply believed in the need for animal data.” (For obvious rea sons, neuroscientists cannot euthanize and dissect human subjects.)
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Denne historien er fra June 2021-utgaven av The Walrus.
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