Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!linus!philabs!sbcs!hadj
From: hadj@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Michael Hadjimichael)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Animal Thought (was Re: language, thought, and culture)
Message-ID: <1046@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Date: 14 Mar 88 21:21:34 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2894@pbhyf.UUCP> <927@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Lines: 40
Keywords: thought modalities
Summary: in experiments, dreaming cats act out their dreams

In article <927@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>, vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes:
> In article <45134@sun.uucp> randolph@sun.UUCP (Randolph Fritz) writes:
> >Cats sometimes move their eyes rapidly while sleeping.  The motions are similar
> >to the rapid eye motions (REM) of a human dreamer; cats probably dream.
> >Apparently cats can operate on representations not physically present . . .
> 
> I believe that it is quite clear that cats and other animals dream.  But
> I wouldn't want to call dreaming a kind of thinking.  The difference is
> that dreams are uncontrolled.  In other words, I don't think you can say
> that the dreamer is operating on the dream images (representations).  . 
> .more like the dreamer's brain (as a part of the dreamer), or a *part*
> of the dreamer's brain (i.e.  the "dream center," "libmic system" (BTW,
> what is the limbic system?)) is operating on them.  

In reference to dreaming cats...

In experiments at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers removed parts
of the pontine area in cats (this is the area which inhibits the body from
acting on messages from the brain during REM sleep) and then allowed them
to enter REM sleep. As a result, the cats acted out their dreams, acting
as if they were awake. The only way to tell that they were asleep was by
noting that they were not responsive to external stimuli.

I realize that this doesn't show that the cats are thinking, but it does
show that interpretable signals are being sent out by the brain. We can't
really say what causes these signals to be generated, but we can see that 
the cat is indeed acting on them (or trying to act on them, in the case
of a normal sleeping cat).

A reference to the experiment mentioned above may be found in
SCIENCE 80 Magazine, Vol.1, No.4, May/June 1980, pp36-43.

-mike hadjimichael.


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