Nature in a experiment.

Why is blight so far?

Like, it sounds so simple.

They had no idea.

But now the data's people.

I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding.

Nature.

Welcome to this week's nature podcast.

In the show, we're learning about three-dimensional light painting and a hexagonal puzzle for rats.

Plus acrobatic all-terrain mini-robots.

This is the nature podcast for the 25th of January 2018.

I'm Charmany Bundell.

And I'm Adam Levy.

First up today, reporter Benjamin Thompson is here to tell us about an update to a classic neuroscience test.

Now, I know a lot of you listen to this podcast on your daily commute. You're probably

pretty familiar with your route, you know the direction you need to go, the path you need to take,

and where you are at a given moment. A lot of this information, known as spatial memory, is stored in an area

of the brain called the hippocampus. Much of what we know about the specialized cells that

build up these mental maps comes from studying rats. But rather than looking at their daily

commute, researchers run them through mazes.

So people have been using mazes for well over 100 years now to try to

study cognitive processes in rats. This is John O'Keefe from the Sainsby Welcome Center at University

...