Thomas, Christopher.

"Scientists Manipulate Consciousness in Rats | National Institutes

of Health (NIH)." U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Dr. Christopher Thomas is a well-known health policy analysis at the National Library of
Medicine (NLM) that focuses on news for animal developments, treatment, wellness, and
ethics, who wrote, Scientists manipulate consciousness in rats, an article published by
the NLM on December 18, 2015. He summarized recent developments in the ability to
take conscious rats and stimulate them through arousal in the thalamus region of the brain
by firing neurons, or depleting neurons, resulting in putting the rat in an unconscious
state. It was noticed that rats have a thalamus region, which is extremely similar to the
thalamus region in the brain of human pointing to the fact the two may not be as
different as many think. The studies are not a recent development, however recently more
effort has been put into understanding the brains of rats through a grant award through the
National Science Foundation.

Bratch, A., S. Kann, J. A. Cain, JE Wu, N. Rivera-Reyes, S. Dalecki, D. Arman, A. Dunn,

S. Cooper, H. E. Corbin, A. R. Doyle, M. J. Pizzo, A. E. Smith, and J. D. Crystal.
"Working Memory Systems in the Rat." National Center for Biotechnology Information.
U.S. National Library of Medicine, 8 Feb. 2016. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
One of the lead researchers who wrote the article, Working Memory Systems in the Rat
on February 6, 2016 was Alexander Brach, who studies memory systems in animals, and
more specifically rats and publishes his findings on the National Institute of Health
(NIH). Brach discusses that the largest feature in humans to work with information is our
memory, which rats were also to be found to also contain when tested with a odor/food
smell test. Rats were found to have an olfactory memory task where they were able to
remember and draw from their memory whether or not a certain smell had food and
whether or not it was worth it to look for food. This is an extremely recently development
for scientists in understanding rat cognition and is something that is currently in
development and will be for many more years to come.

Bunsey, M., and H. Eichenbaum. "Conservation of hippocampal memory function in rats

and humans." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of
Medicine, 18 Jan. 1996. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Howard Eichenbaum is the director for the Cognitive Neurobiology Lab and the Center
for Memory and Brain at Boston University, who studies the hippocampus in human
brains and also the brains of animals, and in that study, published Conservation of
hippocampal memory function in rats and humans, on January 18 of 1996. Dr.
Eichenbaum and Dr. Bunsey contrast the hippocampus to memory in humans to the
hippocampus in rats observing that rats displays both the ability to be expressive with
their memory in addition to be transitive, or essentially possessing the ability to act on
their memory. The evidence presented is through neurotoxic damage (damage through
toxins that specifically affect a brain function) and the rats inability to react after the
damage. This is an old scientific study and is actually an often cited study to the mental
development of rats.

Oterweis, M. "Toward a Biology of Grieving." Toward a Biology of Grieving. U.S.

National Library of Medicine, 1984. Print. 19 Apr. 2016.
Marian Oterweis is an extremely well-known public health author who wrote ,
Beravement: Toward a Biology of Grieving in 1984. Dr. Oterweis discusses the
abiology of grieving in the brain and how grief leads to changes in the endocrine system,
immune system, nervous system, and cardiovascular system in both humans and rats. The
psychology of humans and species are different, but when the same stress stimuli were
applied to monkeys, dogs, and rats, it appeared that similar effects of grief affect the body
in the same way, which was a critical development in understanding the complexity of
animals, or more specifically rats, at the time. Now, much more data and research has
been developed, far beyond what is discussed in the chapter of the biology of grief,
however this book played a key role in being able to help many understand the biological
effects of grief on the body.