You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

I admit it's not a question I ask myself every day, but have you ever wondered what a rat can teach us about being human?

In today's talk, behavioral neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, who spent much of her career

studying negative emotions and depression, shares how to understand joy and anticipation

through studying small but remarkably intelligent mammals, rats.

One morning, I walked into the lab, and I saw these rats run up to the

front of the cage and they were reaching their little arms out and jumping up and down. And it looked

like they were excited to see me, like little rat joy. And on the hills of all the negative

emotion research that I had conducted, I wanted to investigate it.

I wanted to know more.

But could a neuroscientist study something as complex as joy in a rat?

From teaching them to drive tiny cars, yes drive, to studying their joy when anticipating positive experiences,

she explores where happiness might come from,

and that is coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED Talk of the day.

When I first started teaching rats to drive cars, I never dreamed that those little

rodents would steer me toward a surprisingly big discovery, a lesson about the importance

of joy in our lives.

It turns out that we had a lot to teach each other, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm a behavioral neuroscientist.

I'm interested in brains, behavior, and environment, and how they influence one another.

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