Posted on 08/12/2004 6:46:46 PM PDT by blam
Monkeys motivated with laziness 'cure'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 13/08/2004)
Scientists have managed to turn procrastinating primates into workaholic monkeys by switching off a gene in the brain circuit.
Like many humans, monkeys tend to slack when a goal is distant, but work harder as a deadline looms. But scientists in the United States have found a gene therapy - blocking the brain messenger chemical, dopamine - that makes the animals work hard all the time.
The monkeys, which had been trained to perform simple computer tasks in return for treats, lost their sense of balance between a reward and the work required to earn it, says a team at the National Institute of Mental Health, in Bethesda, Maryland.
The team used a technique to turn off a gene that makes a receptor for dopamine, said Dr Barry Richmond. "The gene knockdown triggered a remarkable transformation in the simian work ethic. Without the dopamine receptor, they consistently stayed on-task and made few errors.
"This was conspicuously out of character for these animals," he added. "Like people, they tend to procrastinate when they know they will have to do more work."
Dr Richmond, Dr Zheng Liu, Dr Edward Ginns and colleagues report their work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The find could lead to advances in treating conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, in which the ability to associate work with reward is disturbed.
I want be in the human experimental group :O)
Oh, borg, move over. I'll fight you for first place in line.
Lets try arial spraying of this stuff over the projects.......
Good. Maybe now I can get these thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to actually compose something intelligible.
I could use this stuff myself. You two gotta hold me a spot in line. I'll get there as soon as I can.........
Finally, a cure for liberalism.
Pardon me, Monkeys first, please.
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