Inside The Minds of Smart Mice

Imagine a surgery that could triple your IQ with the nick of a scalpel. That’s what happens to Charlie Gordon, the developmentally-disabled protagonist of the 1958 novel Flowers for Algernon.

A lab mouse named Algernon is the first to get the experimental surgery. Suddenly he can wind his way through intricate mazes in seconds. Algernon easily beats charlie, leaving him to wonder why this mouse is smarter than he is. Then Charlie’s teacher secretly tells him that the mouse he’s been pitted against is no ordinary rodent.

In labs across the country, researchers are experimenting with smart mice that learn more quickly using neuroenhancing drugs. But these same mice get scared more easily, have higher rates of cancer, and can’t seem to solve some simple problems.

As pharmaceutical companies race to develop the next generation of neuroenhancing drugs for humans, scientists are discovering what can get lost when using pills to learn faster and think more clearly.

Science writer Jonah Lehrer delved into the world of cognitively enhanced mice for Nature News. He’s contributing editor at Wired and author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide, and he joins us with more.

The Frontal Cortex: Smart Mice

(Photo by Michail Pishchagin via Flickr/Creative Commons)