Question: After reading through your page and previously answered questions, I was interested to know if rat brains and the human brain have any similarities, and if not how will you be able to progress this research to relate it to the human brain?

Simon Bennett answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Hello,

Very good question, the human and rat brains do have a lot of differences, mainly in the surface area, the frontal lobe and language areas. The brains of rats are smooth whereas our brains have a folded surface, as the connections between neurons are at the surface it allows our brains to have more synapses (connections where neurons communicate). The frontal lobe is probably the area in our brain most important for everything we think of as human behaviour, such as rationality and the ability to suppress ‘animal’ urges.

Where the architecture differs as I mentioned above the regions of the brain and the actual cell located in them are very similar so we can make some useful observations. Using non-inavsive methods such as fMRI and EEG we can look into the brains of humans and see which areas are active and this can help to confirm theories based on data from animal models.

Ultimately however you are right, and any animal data must not be taken to be proof of how the human brain works. We can’t do experiments on humans though so, at least until computer models become complicated enough, we will have to use animals.

Let me know if you want anymore information.

Thanks.