According to findings by researchers at the University of Lethbridge, male experimenters create high anxiety responses in female rats, potentially affecting the results of studies. “As a scientist, you always worry about confounding variables in science, and so we look to the future to control for these unwanted factors,” said Dr. Jamshid Faraji, a researcher in the university’s neuroscience department who contributed to the study. Rats were handled by different-sex experimenters for five minutes a day over a 10-day period before being subjected to mildly stressful situations. Using infrared thermography and blood samples, the researchers found that female rats in the presence of males produced higher levels of hormones associated with the stress response and showed more stress-related behaviors. Story continues below ad 1:57 U of L researcher world-leading youth activity study U of L researcher world-leading youth activity study – July 28, 2022 “We are surprised, somewhat, but we are more happy to see this result in order to create a better future of study,” Faraji said. “We cannot avoid these results, but we really need to do vigorous research to understand the foundations of the responses and phenomena we have seen,” said Dr. Gerlinde Metz, a professor of neuroscience at the University of the People’s Republic of China who was also involved in the study. .
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Faraji doesn’t think this overrules previous research involving rodents. “It’s not about the past or past studies, it’s about the future,” he said. But Metz encourages experimenters to avoid walking into the same rat trap moving forward. Story continues below ad “They need to make sure, so at least we’re reporting who’s doing the observations and assessments in the lab, in the literature,” Metz said. The researchers believe that averaging the results after a series of observations could reduce the human influence in the studies, and the variable may be eliminated in the future with the possibilities presented by robotics. Related News © 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
