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What can rats do without a cortex? A lot! For your reading pleasure, I've made a PDF of my tattered copy of Whishaw's classic book chapter "The Decorticate Rat" from 1990 While you download it from this link, some notes...https://drive.google.com/open?id=16kPnZnyeDxCpl-zm5jo8TTJ5nL3bKnoP …
From the late 70s, Whishaw, Kolb and colleagues produced over 20 years worth of careful studies on the behavioural and learning capacity of rats without cortex. Its an intimidating literature - and this 1990 book chapter, long out of print, is the only review I know about.
these Whishaw/Kolb papers are essential reading, for two reasons: 1. To set major recent papers on the (lack of) effects of cortical lesions in context (i.e. what rats can do with no cortex at all) 2. Their studies were largely of "natural behaviour"https://medium.com/the-spike/when-cortex-stops-making-sense-cfc52984aef0 …
So to make this review available again, the linked PDF is a scan of my late 90s photocopy of a photocopy of a book (with two readers' worth of highlighting captured in situ). The fact its readable is frickin miracle.
p.s. The chapter is from B. Kolb & R. C. Tees (Eds.), The cerebral cortex of the rat MIT Press. The APA reference is here: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1990-98262-005 … Enjoy!
p.p.s tagging in @MMaravall whose question to me prompted this bit of archeology!
What can rats do without a brain:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946174/ …
Thanks Mark! The capabilities of the decerebrate rat - ain't nothing but a brainstem - are also rather broad, as we outlined here.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17428776/ …
John O’Keefe used to say the only thing rats can’t do without a cortex is trim their toenails!
That's true! In Whishaw's review, there's even a picture of the untrimmed nails of the decorticate rat...
Thank you so much for sharing this! I've enhanced the PDF a bit to make it easier to read and highlight. og text: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ucns0urvqk245q7/Whishaw1990_enhanced.pdf?dl=0 … Overlaid:https://www.dropbox.com/s/aq5mchelu9e56iy/Whishaw1990_enhanced2.pdf?dl=0 …
That's great, thank you!
What can humans do without a cortex? An interesting perspective of Bjorn Merker. Consciousness without a cerebral cortex: A challenge for neuroscience and medicinehttp://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X07000891 …
Dan Guitton has studied eye movements in hemidecorticate patients (e.g., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982218312016?via%3Dihub#fig1 …). I met one patient, DR, outside our lab and we had a totally normal conversation. I *never* would have guessed that they were missing half a brain!pic.twitter.com/l4i9Hrx6iU
Pat Goldman once told me from studies like this we got the "we only use 10% of our brains" canard.
I thought the "we only use 10% of our brain" myth was based on the fact that at the time neuroscientists thought only 10% of the brain was made of neurons (and the other 90% were "supporting" glia)
No, it's a misquotation of William James' reserve theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth …
Some great references in there, thank you.
I think “decorticate” is my new favourite word!
Thanks for sharing this Mark; it looks super interesting!
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