3) Severing Cat’s Brain Stems And Putting Them On A Treadmill

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This is one of the darkest experiments we’ve featured here on the old Sick Chirpse (although the guy who did all those head transplants on dogs is a close second). Scientists, quite a while ago, severed the brain stem on a cat. This surgery meant that no messages could get from the cat’s brain to its spine or muscles. This is what happens when it was put on a treadmill:

The fact that the cat can still walk just fine thank you very much, was a pretty epic finding. If no info is getting from your noggin to your muscles, exactly how is it managing to hop and skip and have a gay old time?

The answer lies in the motor neurons of your spine. The circuitry down the centre of your back bone is so amazingly complex that it handles all the mechanics of walking without your brain getting involved at all. Your brain basically just says “go”, “stop” or “faster”, the details are all handled in your spine. Amazing really.

In a similar experiment scientists made discoveries related to dreaming, that most mysterious of topics. When you sleep a part your brain stops signals from reaching your motor neurons; this prevents you from acting out your dreams and actually running and jumping in your sleep. When you cut this part of the brain out of a cat the inhibition is lost so that the cat lives out his or her dreams.

The cats were found to act out things like fear responses, jumps and attacks. It’s like the brain is testing out all of its circuits so that when the cat needs to use any of its repertoire in waking life they nail it first time:

Still, pretty gross experiment.