Procrastination cure for monkeys
13 August 2004
by Richard
Conan-Davies
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Procrastinating or somewhat lazy monkeys have been 'cured' of lazing around through the use temporary genetic change straight to their brains. This is all according to research recently published online by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) Barry Richmond of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland and his team trained monkeys to do a simple task that needed to be done several times to get a reward. The task required longer term effort before getting the reward. The team injected a bit of DNA into the monkey brains that switched off a particular protein in their brains and noticed that they just kept going at the tasks rather than giving up on the tasks to get the reward. This research has important relevance to how some depressed people have similar parts in their brain. Such work could help to deal with people who suffer major depression.
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