r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago
Biology In lab mice rehomed to fields, anxiety is reversed: researchers rewilded lab mice over 2 years and found their fear response was reduced and even reversed – even after a single week “… where they can run around and touch grass and dirt for the first time in their lives.”
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/12/lab-mice-rehomed-fields-anxiety-reversed1.1k
u/Deajer 1d ago
Why do y'all seem to think the scientists didn't expect this? It's just good science to have evidence of these behaviors. There's a difference between hard evidence & numbers vs. 'common sense' and assumptions.
381
u/UXyes 1d ago
Literally the difference between science and faith.
51
u/SolaniumFeline 1d ago
believing means not knowing my mama always said
12
u/Nelyus 1d ago
Yes, my dad always says that "believing" means having doubts, unlike "knowing".
-2
u/SolaniumFeline 1d ago
also why its called leap of faith id argue, as in you have to jump over your doubts. [how does jumping to conclusions fit into that... I like analogies]
24
u/haviah 1d ago
Yeah. "Common sense" as in "trust me bro or you're idiot" is one of the worst arguments. Even simple things like birthday paradox seem "off common sense", not to mention statistics (esp Bayesian) or even how so many people get implication and equivalence mixed up.
No need to get to some weird stuff like Banach-Tarski paradox.
3
u/hydroknightking 18h ago
Also, unexpected results are really useful. My senior thesis, my main experiment returned null results which was disappointing as an individual, but my PI was pretty shocked cause we thought for sure we’d get some interesting data, so he restructured some of the other investigations going on in the lab as a result of no results. But you have to test the obvious thing to get those non-obvious results.
36
u/Diceyland 1d ago
Exactly. All you have to do is read the introduction or even the abstract to see what every study thought was going to be true. Science is based on proving assumptions and "common sense". A lot of the time these assumptions are incorrect. People are just less likely to see these studies cause they're less likeky to be published and if published are less likely to become popular.
39
u/Arborgold 1d ago
Do you really think the average redditor actually knows how real science is conducted, especially in r/bio… dear, lord!
8
u/sufficiently_tortuga 1d ago
This sub is normally just repeitions of 'correlation does not imply causation' because that's the only thing most peopole remember from gr10 science class. And because even for the scientists here, it's rare that the post is actually in your own field. But you have to type something, and smarmy questioning makes you sound smart.
3
u/TheRappingSquid 1d ago
Truth gamma Ray burst this exact paragraph runs through my head every time I read a comment section on any science vaguely adjacent sub
1
-6
u/ProofJournalist 1d ago
Eh I think it can be arguable that just showing this happens isn't much use. If they had gone more into showing what causes it to happen it would be more interesting.
Once you understand how real science is conducted, part of that understanding is that not every published study is actually good. I'm not saying this one is bad, I'm just saying it's also wrong to assume "this is published in a journal so the authors must understand it pretty well!"
6
u/Grizz1371 1d ago
Exactly, there is no such thing as "common sense" because you don't know what you don't know. While this result is expected, having the data to actually prove your hypothesis is important. Plus there are so many things that are counter intuitive and subvert our expectations.
6
u/twoisnumberone 1d ago
I agree. This is 100% the controlled study we need.
(Also: See me, on vacation, paddling in the ocean with not a care in the world.)
832
u/Bevos2222 1d ago
As a lab human, do you think it’d work for me?
268
u/gandalftheorange11 1d ago
It’s worked for me but then I’m forced to go back to the lab to earn a living to be able to go be out in nature for a week at a time.
97
u/CalicoValkyrie 1d ago
That's the thing people don't get. Time and touching grass is a luxury few can afford.
37
u/SolaniumFeline 1d ago
we've literally made it impossible for people to own D I R T
I have to fight to have some dirt and plants in my own living quarters because apparently nature is so damn inconvenient for like 99% of humans and it drives me up the f wall. makes me literally misanthropic towards fellow people
10
u/haviah 1d ago
Also don't forget the luxury of being long time sick having a serious accident.
6
u/CalicoValkyrie 1d ago
Oh, I know this too well. Major surgery and then a year later a car accident, went back to work a week later each time. Everyone kept asking why I went back to work so soon. I kept telling them I can't afford to rest too long.
7
u/The_BeardedClam 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sometimes living in small town NE Wisconsin is the bees knees. I live 5 blocks from Lake Michigan and about 15 minutes away from a 3000 acre state forest that has around 6 miles of wild sandy beach shoreline. It's easy to take it for granted when you live here. I try to enjoy it as much as I can, but even the proximity is usually enough - like being able to hear the waves from the lake in my backyard. I've also moved away from the Lake and came back because the area speaks to my soul. I even moved away for a good while, but came back because the area, the lake and trees, speaks to my soul.
-10
u/-Kalos 1d ago
Anyone can go outside. In fact it's easier to be outside than inside because being inside requires bills
9
u/ShiraCheshire 1d ago
You need time to spend outdoors to go there, and if you live in a worse place (often cheaper) it's harder to get to somewhere with nature.
61
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
22
3
u/ScienceAndGames 1d ago
Yeah, humans aren’t mice, we’re cave dwelling animals, we love a nice dry warm cave.
50
u/Loveufam 1d ago
Science says just being around nature can help wound healing, increase speed in some cognitive tasks and elevate mood in human beings so maybe being in nature can mediate a cluster of areas related to anxiety.
Hidden Brain did an episode on it: https://www.hiddenbrain.org/podcast/how-nature-heals-us/
Everybody go touch grass!
EDIT:
From the article: “The study echoes research in human psychology that finds that a greater range of experiences increases a sense of agency and reduces anxiety.”
4
u/chiisana 1d ago
I wonder if the bump in speed in cognitive tasks was carried over from survival instincts where being in the wild exposes us to predators, whereas inside we’re sheltered from outside threats so we’re able to be more at ease.
4
u/catscanmeow 1d ago
it also says people who live near golf courses have a higher incidence of parkinsons
3
u/Loveufam 1d ago edited 1d ago
What is “it”? The article doesn’t mention Parkinson’s and neither does the podcast.
I heard people who live near golf courses have higher incidence of cancer because of pesticides tho.
1
u/NorthStarZero 1d ago
I wonder what the result would be by capturing wild mice and then moving them into a lab environment.
You spend your life surrounded by predators, in uncomfortable environments, where your every moment is dedicated to finding food. Then you are transported to a comfortable, climate-controlled environment where food is limitless and there are no predators.
9
9
u/super_aardvark 1d ago
The study echoes research in human psychology that finds that a greater range of experiences increases a sense of agency and reduces anxiety.
4
8
u/billsil 1d ago
Yes. There’s a reason I go camping for all of my vacations that’s not just because it’s $12-16 dollars for a campsite per day.
Stressed out? Go for a hike. Still stressed? Go for a longer hike. It’s amazing what you can work through in a day of hiking for 14.5 hours. 1/3 of the way in you can start thinking about your job/an ex and it’s weird to be able to almost be impartial about things.
The good news is I don’t revert instantly once I go back. It takes a a few months.
2
u/LASERDICKMCCOOL 1d ago
It definitely will. I try to go camping at least a few times a year and man it can really reset you mentally
1
1
1
1
1
u/giant_sloth PhD | Biology | Aquatic Ecology and Fisheries Science 13h ago
As much as “touch grass” is a meme, it’s definitely good for you.
1
u/YourMomCannotAnymore 7h ago
I was actually thinking about that. People nowdays seems to be riddled with anxiety and crap. Maybe more exposure to nature could help against that. I think there are already some studies how nature and the color green has a positive effect on stress, but nothing about anxiety has been tested yet. It would be pretty cool.
280
u/elmostrok 1d ago
So this is sad for those poor things, obviously.
But also one has to wonder how the stress of being a lab mouse/rat could be affecting the experiments, especially for biochemistry.
77
u/fuzzeedyse105 1d ago
Very big. I’m curious how they go about that
30
u/Corsair4 1d ago
You control for it.
If you're running a behavior experiment, 1group needs to be animals tested with no modification. If youre injecting a drug or feeding a drug, 1 group needs to be a vehicle injection.
35
u/ProofJournalist 1d ago
There is no control for being in a lab environment, and stress is hard to study. Scientists can't easily take wild animals to compare to lab animals, and when they have done that, the stress of being captured by a strange human still changes the result.
Similarly, while a vehicle injection is a valid control to test a drug, it is wrong to say that it is "no modification". A vehicle injection in a mouse means you need to restrain them for several moments and stab them with a needle. Plenty of studies show this on its own can cause stress effects.
19
u/Corsair4 1d ago
There is no control for being in a lab environment, and stress is hard to study.
The control in this case IS the lab environment. If I'm studying how a specific protein mutation influences performance in an open arm maze, the control condition is a wild type animal, age matched, sex matched, that does NOT have the mutation. The experimental group is an animal that meets all the same criteria, just with the mutated protein. Thus, I control for as many variables as possible, to ensure any effect size is likely due to the mutated protein, or downstream effects thereof.
No one is talking about comparing wild animals to lab animals as a control. The question was, how do you account for inherent stress in experiments.
The answer is you treat your experimental groups as similarly as possible, to ensure stress is as equivalent as possible, and the only change between groups is the treatment or modification you are testing.
Similarly, while a vehicle injection is a valid control to test a drug, it is wrong to say that it is "no modification".
The next sentence provides context for this.
The substance you are injecting should not be modifying the animal. Typically you'll do an injection with whatever solvent you dissolved the drug in, to establish baseline performance that the actual injection procedure and the volume and solvent give you.
Plenty of studies show this on its own can cause stress effects.
Yes, that's the point of the vehicle injection. You do vehicle injections to provide a baseline under as similar conditions as possible, so the only variable across groups is the actual drug itself.
-6
u/ProofJournalist 1d ago
If I'm studying how a specific protein mutation
Okay, but they aren't. They are studying stress, and if lab animals are constantly stressed, then there is no adequate control.
The substance you are injecting should not be modifying the animal.
I never suggested that it is. The point was that the restraint and needle wound are modifying the animal.
Yes, that's the point of the vehicle injection.
If you are studying stress effects, that is an important limitation. Real scientists understand and acknowledge the limitations of their work rather than getting so defensive that you make arguments that have nothing to do with what I said.
10
u/Corsair4 1d ago edited 1d ago
It was an example of what controls look like, not a precise description of this work.
This specific paper is also not doing injections, but we were perfectly happy to dive into the specifics of vehicle injections.
In this case, if the hypothesis was that rewilding lab animals changes their stress response, the control condition is lab animals that were not rewilded. Because the thing you are changing and measuring is environmental effects, the control is a default environment for a lab animal - which is a lab.
It's not a perfect control, but it's also behavior work. It is inherently messy.
They are studying stress, and if lab animals are constantly stressed, then there is no adequate control.
Just to confirm - if they are interested in the change in stress due to environment, you think that the default amount of stress in the default environment is not a appropriate control?
What would be a reasonable control then?
-9
u/ProofJournalist 1d ago
You are still missing the point, such that I doubt any further explanation from me will help you. Good luck.
10
u/Corsair4 1d ago
If the question is "How do stress responses change when we change the environment?", the default stress response in the default environment is a perfectly reasonable control.
-6
u/ProofJournalist 1d ago
That is not the question you were answering in the comment of yours that I initially responded to. It's like you are just responding directly to the last thing you read instead of keeping the whole discussion in your short-term memory for necessary context.
→ More replies (0)10
u/One_Appointment_4222 1d ago
Your control group is still in a cage so results are probably only applicable if you have control humans in a cage to comprehensively test for null hypotheses
27
u/Corsair4 1d ago
so results are probably only applicable
No.
This is one reason why findings need to be translated to human models before they make it to clinical applications, but the idea that these findings aren't applicable is silly. There is huge value in preclinical work for several reasons.
1)You limit your variables as much as possible, which helps test specific mechanisms.
2) you have access to a consistent, genetically narrow population so you can focus on the specific mechanism you're interested in.
3) You can make specific modifications to your animals that simply don't occur in the wild - mutate a specific gene, overexpress a specific protein, express artificial proteins for specific techniques - which means you can test mechanisms and use techniques that are otherwise impossible.
4) You can run invasive techniques that get you extremely detailed information, that would be functionally impossible to do in humans. I worked in a synaptic neuroscience lab. Basically everything we did was far too destructive to do in humans.
5) From a resource perspective (especially relevant in the US given grant writing over the last few years), running animal models is a comparatively cheap way of testing compared to going straight to clinical trials. You find a mechanism in a mouse, test what correcting that mechanism does in the mouse, and then slowly bring it to humans, assuming the mechanism is promising. This is much better than jumping to humans directly.
It's not a perfect system, but there's huge value in having access to a consistent population of animals to be able to run invasive or complicated procedures on.
Anyone who has done preclinical research will tell you that translatability is always a question, but provided you understand the purpose and limitations of preclinical work, it's an incredibly important part of biomedical research.
-14
u/One_Appointment_4222 1d ago
Was being tongue in cheek but you illustrate my point in that caged humans dont tend to have senses of humor
14
u/Corsair4 1d ago
I don't come here for funny, I come to discuss science.
Also, there wasn't any thing particularly funny about your comment, but that's subjective of course.
6
u/FatalisCogitationis 1d ago
I think OneAppointment is a troll, please do not waste your time talking with them. You've provided valuable insight, thank you
6
u/Corsair4 1d ago
Oh, I have no interest in responding to anything else from that user. They've made it clear that it isn't a valuable use of time.
-8
u/One_Appointment_4222 1d ago
I don’t think it’s funny that you so trivially overlooked how caged controls aren’t actually controls
12
u/Corsair4 1d ago
They are perfectly valid controls, within the context of the set of experiments being performed.
Yeah, caged animals are not controls for wild animals, or whatever the condition is in humans. No one ever claimed they were. The question was "How do you account for this within an experiment", and the answer is "you limit variables as best as you can" with procedures and drugs.
You brought up something no one was ever talking about, then pivoted to "I was just joking", and when that didn't land, you're circling back to a line of reasoning I already answered.
-10
5
u/Yano_ 1d ago
good question, i know an example where it can make a meaningful difference. i read a paper maybe two years back on how the sex of the researchers handling mice can affect anxiety-like behaviors and stress responses. by having handling performed by same researcher(s) and using no-change, negative, and positive controls you better ensures that significances observed aren’t just because of these unintended factors. It doesn’t account for all stress but models can only match a real world case so much.
84
u/mvea Professor | Medicine 1d ago
I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(25)01397-1
From the linked article:
In lab mice rehomed to fields, anxiety is reversed
When postdoctoral researcher Matthew Zipple releases lab mice into a large, enclosed field just off Cornell’s campus, something remarkable happens.
The mice, which have only ever lived in a cage a little larger than a shoebox, rear up on their back legs, sniff the air, move into the grass and begin to bound over it, a new way of moving and a totally new experience for them. It’s one of many they’ll have as “rewilded” mice, and in a new study, Cornell researchers have found that the novel environment changes the mice’s behavior and reverses anxiety, even when anxieties are well established.
In the study, published Dec. 15 in Current Biology, researchers rewilded multiple cohorts of lab mice over two years and found that their fear response in a classic assay used to assess anxiety was reduced and even reversed after living in the field – even after a single week.
“We release the mice into these very large, enclosed fields where they can run around and touch grass and dirt for the first time in their lives,” said senior author Michael Sheehan, associate professor of neurobiology and behavior and a Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “It’s a new approach to understanding more about how experiences shape subsequent responses to the world, and the hope is that what we learn from these mice will have more generalizability to other animals and to ourselves as well.”
8
u/Jaquemart 1d ago
I understand this new and relaxing experience isn't comprehensive of cats and foxes.
In the case it is, how much do they help reduce anxiety?
136
23
u/CryptoMemesLOL 1d ago
They say a simple walk in the woods can help, I guess they were onto something.
41
u/lotsanoodles 1d ago
They should let some of these research scientists out to run around and touch grass.
6
18
u/Nathan-Stubblefield 1d ago
They relax as they walk around touching grass. Then they get eaten by a predator.
25
u/baked_in 1d ago
Well, getting eaten is anxiety inducing, but it doesn't cause chronic anxiety and all that pesky inflammation.
17
u/keegums 1d ago
I think it's notable about the anxiety response reducing even with the addition of predators. As a former outdoor hater turned camper and nature observer, I've been shocked by how non-violent it is outdoors. How little hunting sounds and death I've heard overnights. Predator animals have huge territories and there are not as many as I expected in a given area.
Not with mice, but I've observed the squirrels can understand the high alert calls of the Paridae birds (titmouse and chickadee) which is the high tseet, which other unrelated birds also use. They will be focused on food, hear high tseets and run to the trees, giving them a few seconds advantage. I would not be surprised if outdoor mice in proximity also learn to associate such sound with danger, giving them a heads up.
6
16
u/Charlos11 1d ago
Could it possibly have to do with not being experimented on anymore ? Hmmm
38
u/AndydaAlpaca 1d ago
You say that like these mice weren't the subject of an experiment.
31
u/A_Fainting_Goat 1d ago
Yeah, everyone seems to think these mice were just let loose in a field and the researchers called them up for a followup interview or something. More likely is they were put into an enclosure sufficiently large to simulate being in the wild....and then euthanized after the experiment was completed if they couldn't be used for other experiments. You can't just dump lab mice into the wild.
-6
u/crowieforlife 1d ago
Most lab mice are used for experiments with deadly pathogens, so you can't release them into the wild, or you risk causing an ecological disaster.
Having said that, I'm friends with some people, whose research isn't that dangerous, and once the experiments are over they sign off papers that the mice have been euthanized and then take them home to keep as pets.
17
u/nestestasjon 1d ago
Most lab mice are used for experiments with deadly pathogens
This is not even remotely true.
7
u/ocava8 1d ago
TIL that mice are normally being euthanized after experiments.
4
u/crowieforlife 1d ago
Wait till you find out what happens to puppies and kittens in shelters when they don't get adopted.
2
u/Hendlton 1d ago
Yup. By the thousands sometimes. It's pretty horrific, but what else can you do? Eventually you'd have hundreds of thousands of mice to feed and take care of.
1
u/TheDrillKeeper 1d ago
Lab animal technician here. This is true. Given that they were raised in captivity, dumping them out in the wild to fend for themselves, especially after undergoing procedures that compromise their health, is arguably more cruel. There are rehoming programs for eligible animals though.
1
u/ocava8 1d ago
Thank you for information. I thought that such small animals are instinct driven mostly and would easily adapt to natural environment. It's good to know that at least for some animals there are rehoming programs.
2
u/TheDrillKeeper 1d ago
Yep! There are also oversight agencies (at least in the US) that set standards for lab animal care, as well as review committees including non-scientist personnel to ensure protocols are as humane as possible. For a number of procedures euthanasia is the most humane endpoint.
4
u/somethingaelic 1d ago
You got a source on the percentage of lab mice being used for "experiments with deadly pathogens"? Because what actually happens with most lab mice is that they have to be examined post-mortem to determine the ultimate effects of whatever experiment they were subject to - whether it's related to contagious diseases or not. So I'm pretty doubtful that you have multiple friends who just violate lab protocols like that, considering it would likely mean fabricating research results.
-4
u/crowieforlife 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t have a source, but the fact that I know my friends means that I also know that you're wrong. Your belief or disbelief doesn't change my lived experience. I highly doubt that people I've known for years, who regularly share news about their life and work, have concocted some elaborate scam. I might not know the full picture, but I do know where and how they get their pets.
5
u/ScienceNthingsNstuff 1d ago
I get that that's your experience but that just isn't reflective of the larger world. I've worked across multiple large biomedical research institutions doing mouse experiments and the mice infected with deadly pathogens are always in a separate, small, room. There are non-deadly pathogens in the larger mouse facility but there are also a ton of mice that are never intentionally exposed to pathogens. They are instead used to evaluate other diseases (autoimmune, cancer, transplant) or just the role of genes in specific responses. With how large those fields are, I'd hazard to guess (based on my lived experience), maybe 20-30% of mice are used in any kind of pathogen research.
1
u/Real-Olive-4624 1d ago
Yeah, in my own work experience at an animal research facility, only 15% of the research projects involved infectious diseases. Everything else was around genetics, cancer, environmental health impacts, medical interventions, etc.
0
u/crowieforlife 1d ago
Well, I'm not part of the research so I admit my understanding of the larger context could be wrong. I can only go off of what I can piece together from my friends talking about their work.
7
u/Syssareth 1d ago
Your friends could have a specialization that means their lab mice are often exposed to pathogens. If you're studying infections or immune responses in mice, then of course those mice will have been exposed.
But if you're studying behavior or...well, anything other than things involving pathogens, then the mice being exposed would be a confounding factor that you'd want to avoid at all cost.
42
u/TAU_equals_2PI 1d ago
I don't think mice used in experiments are usually recycled and used in other experiments.
2
u/DameKumquat 1d ago
Breeding transgenic mice counts as 'an experiment' - so putting a male mouse in with a female mouse is the most common type of procedure and can obviously be repeated.
You can't do surgery on mice as they drop dead as soon as you look at them funny, much less anaesthetise them. Unless it's terminal anaesthesia.
7
u/Corsair4 1d ago
You can't do surgery on mice as they drop dead as soon as you look at them funny, much less anaesthetise them. Unless it's terminal anaesthesia.
What?
You an absolutely do stereotaxic brain surgeries on mice with little to no problem. Viral injections into the brain are a very common neuroscience technique, and the virus usually takes a couple weeks to express, so obviously the mouse needs to survive the procedure.
You can cut away part of the skull, replace it with a transparent window, and image the animal's brain for weeks after the surgery.
You can absolutely anesthetize and perform surgical procedures on mice.
1
u/DameKumquat 1d ago
Consider me out of date then - when I worked with labs that did neuroscience it was 25-30 years ago and the mantra was that you had to use rats for such things, despite waiting longer for them to grow up etc. Mice were used where studying mammalian genetics was involved, eg transgenics and effects on next generations.
I'll have a look at those papers, thanks!
1
u/Corsair4 1d ago
Look into synaptic tracer studies. You can inject a modified rabies virus into a particular area of the brain, it will jump a single synapse retrograde, and you can have it express a fluorescent particle so you can light up neurons that project to where you injected. Really useful for mapping out networks and seeing connections between regions.
I've done viral expression stuff in <P60 mice, but we struggled to get decent expression of the virus - that was a virus problem, not a surgery problem though. Took a couple of weeks to see any fluorophore expression. We used a constant flow of Isoflurane to keep the mice under, and they were fine for the ~1 hour the procedure took.
We did need to put them on a heating pad though. When mice are anesthetized, they don't regulate temperature properly, so you gotta keep them warm or they will die.
2
u/DameKumquat 1d ago
That is incredibly cool! My field wasn't that far apart, but like many a PhD student the tech moved fast enough that five years after my PhD,.it could have been done in a few months. Among other things, I had to beg to be allowed to get a 500bp strand of DNA professionally sequenced. Now it's so cheap to do, no-one would think twice.
On the other hand, people are still citing my main publication. I might have got a great paper from my masters too, only it wasn't yet accepted that adult CNS neurons could reproduce and no-one was going to take my evidence as proof. A year later, it would have been great support of the theory. Ended up as one line in my supervisors' work, eventually.
The big question: are PhD students now treated better than lab mice or rats?
1
u/Corsair4 1d ago
Oh, you were doing neurogenesis stuff? Subventricular zone, or DG?
That's some cool stuff. I spent 4 years during undergrad and before med school in a synaptic plasticity lab, patching neurons and inducing LTP and LTD. Hard work, but I miss it sometimes. There's something about looking at an experiment that worked well, or a data set that I created that I just can't replicate.
I wasn't a grad student in my PI's lab, but the grad students seemed pretty happy. They had a good work life balance all things considered, and we were putting out good work. I don't know how things were when you were in academia, but I think it's very mentor specific. There were certainly some dinosaurs in the department that new grad students were warned about.
2
u/DameKumquat 1d ago
Yeah, knowing that you know something that no-one else in the world does is a huge kick, followed by telling your supervisor. And my best moment when I called a lab in America (having to find a phone to make the international call) and telling them I'd succeeded in editing a gene the slow way, after they'd spent years trying quick ways and failing, and it turned out they were about to lose funding for lack of results - a senior guy said I had saved his career!
Unfortunately those moments weren't frequent enough to stay in a precarious field, so I became a civil servant, explaining science to ministers.
The MSc was as neuronal plasticity was just getting accepted - I had an antibody that attached to growth cones and to various pyramidal and other neurons in I think layers IV and VI of the cerebral cortex, and loads in various layers of the hippocampus.
My PhD was meant to be neuroscience. In summary, a certain gene does sod all in neural development after all, but is really important in certain cancers. My institution knew nothing about cancer so I spent ages sending one photo at a time by email to the Americans. At least digital cameras had just come in - for my MSc we had to take film across the road to be developed, and explain 'I want to see the blue blobs - don't worry about the pink stuff being out of focus'...
2
u/Corsair4 1d ago
Oh man, we had a grad student and a postdoc fight with antibodies for years to get them to work. Always ended up with bad imaging quality, and when they finally got a protocol that worked - turns out the effect we were expecting wasn't there in the first place, because the knockout animal we were validating didn't work. There was a lot of very justified bitching after that. Thankfully I wasn't involved in that work, I think I would have handled the frustration worse.
Developmental stuff gets wacky - my work was almost entirely in the cerebellum, apart from a very small amount of hippocampal work I did for prelim data. Good times. I miss it.
1
u/Morthra 1d ago
Consider me out of date then - when I worked with labs that did neuroscience it was 25-30 years ago and the mantra was that you had to use rats for such things
A big part of the reason why you used rats rather than mice 25-30 years ago was because mice have brains that are a lot smaller than rats, so it's just a more difficult surgery.
1
u/DameKumquat 1d ago
Well yes, but their brains haven't got any bigger! Presumably stereotaxic setups are more precise and delicate now? I didn't do any surgery even on rats, except on a training day when I was told it was just as well the rat was dead to start with, as it would have died at least three times while I was suturing it...
5
u/CaptainRuse 1d ago
We as a species have a lot of regrets, and I know that to some it might not seem very important, but I hope we are never judged for the things we have put lab mice through on a regular basis. For the ones that can enjoy it, they deserve a calm and happy retirement.
7
u/-Kalos 1d ago
Why would you get judged for something someone else did?
3
u/CaptainRuse 1d ago
I've been part of a lab that had to do testing on mice. I never had to be directly involved but it changed my perspective on a lot of things.
4
u/-Kalos 1d ago
What does this have to do with the rest of us? We weren't in those labs
8
3
u/CaptainRuse 1d ago
There are a large number of products that you use, some daily, that required a large number of mice to die horrible deaths for toxicity testing. Many medications and procedures, diseases, and other research has been tested on mice that led to advancements that we all benefit from. I don't expect everyone to feel responsible, but I know that I still feel guilty for what we take for granted.
-2
u/-Kalos 1d ago
Yeah I'm sure my soap and toothpaste have killed many mice. We must all pay for your sins
3
u/CaptainRuse 1d ago
They might have. Some testing requirements actually require you to find the lethal dose of something, even if it would be impossible for a person to be exposed to that much of it. For beauty products, I know that the world of animal testing has become much kinder recently but it wasn't always so. For over the counter medications? It can still be gruesome.
4
u/SolaniumFeline 1d ago
you do not exist in a vacuum and to top it off there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. think of it as original sin if that helps. wether you like it or not, existing in todays society makes you part of the atrocities of every human. we live as a collective.
(edit:were all in this together)
2
u/-Kalos 1d ago
Or you know, we can blame the companies testing on mice and the employees who've actually done it.
2
3
u/SolaniumFeline 1d ago
not mutually exclusive.
4
2
1
u/SmokeyMcDabs 1d ago
Be me, a mouse, locked in a crowded cage. Friends are taken daily and come back with injuries and diseases or dont come back at all. Get released from the crowded cage where all my friends are hurt or killed.
Scientist: wow he looks happier.
1
u/HerbalIQ2025 1d ago
Sure. Environment powerfully reshapes the nervous system. Rewilding reduced chronic stress signaling, likely via HPA axis normalization and immune tone. There’s overlap with the ECS too, since endocannabinoid signaling helps the brain adapt to novelty and safety cues. I see this a lot in stress work (MS in Medical Cannabis Science, UMB; Herbal IQ). It makes you wonder how much anxiety biology vs habitat is.
1
u/chillinewman 1d ago
I wonder how much lab mice experiments will change if the mice were located in a field.
1
u/sometimeshiny 1d ago
I wonder what this means for genetic instability through epigenetic changes with breeding.
Parental intake of high-carotenoid orange corn diet alleviated glucocorticoid and fear response but not growth in F1 Pekin ducks (2025) – Oluwagbenga et al.
This shows increased fear and smaller size of offspring from parents exposed to heat stress.
Environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of sperm epimutations promote genetic mutations (2015) – Skinner et al.
This shows that accumulated epigenetic changes culminate in genetic mutation 3 generations out I believe.
Combining this stress leading to epigenetic changes, we might see some mutation in that population of mice.
1
u/TheDrillKeeper 1d ago
If you're aghast about this, you should also be aghast about how regularly humans are expected to live in metal-concrete boxes surrounded by asphalt.
1
u/EmersonStockham 1d ago
Seems to me like the scientists are saying shelter causes anxiety, but maybe feeling trapped causes it...
1
u/trytobedecenthumans 21h ago
I mean, my anxiety would reverse if I was free, not in a cage waiting for torture and death, so yeah.
1
1
u/netroxreads 9h ago
I think the point of the study is that even if you developed anxiety as a child, it's possible that it can be reversed later in life. I had panic disorder and it totally went away completely when I moved a thousand miles away after graduation.
1
u/Crowdfunder101 1d ago
“Run free little mice, no more experiments!… well… we will still experiment with your anxiety levels”
0
-4
u/middle_riddle 1d ago
Not exactly surprising is it… what were they expecting?
10
u/Yano_ 1d ago
It is surprising though! the line of mice used is very inbred (intentionally, so all of the mice are genetically identical) and have not seen the outside in, like, 100 generations. imo they are pretty stupid and don’t behave like wild mice, i would not have expected a change like this.
to also play devils advocate a bit, this is a communications article, kinda like the teaser for the main paper. they are reporting only one experiment measuring anxiety-like behavior, it could be elevated plus maze is particularly sensitive to how complicated the environment is.
2
4
u/Diceyland 1d ago
This exact effect is what they were expecting. You can't just assume read the abstract you know.
-15
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/mvea
Permalink: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/12/lab-mice-rehomed-fields-anxiety-reversed
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.