Dr. Sandra Weintraub

So I, I don't know, it must be good for, it must be good for you to be.

I know that, you know, if rats are raised in cages by themselves and,

versus rats raised in cages with other rats that they can play with and be with.

If you look at their cortex in the brain, it's thicker in the socializing rats than in the non-socializing rats.

So there's gotta be some kind of an impact of this external stimulation through every single source through which you get stimulation into your brain

to help it flourish.

But I don't know anything at the mechanistic level that I can offer here.

It sounds very appealing.

I mean, because I mean, animals need to know where to find food.

They need to know where to find their mate.

They need to know where to find the chicks that they left to go and get food to feed them.

So I think that, you know, memory is very central.

And we also know that in the brain, the memory area is very important.

heavily connected throughout the brain via multiple synapses with many different parts of the brain.

So it's kind of like a way station for all kinds of information.

And it brings together

where the memory center is, internal milieu, what's going on in your body with what's going on in the thinking part of your brain.

So it kind of helps bring it, it aligns the internal needs of the organism with what's out there at any particular time.

And which is why we're so adaptable.

And I think memory is a huge part of it because you've got to, you have to remember what didn't work.