Navigation

Rat Park

Have you heard of the Rat Park experiments?

Studies on rats addicted to morphine show that they’ll keep triggering morphine levers until they die…unless they’re not in cruel, unnatural cages where they’re severely distressed. Morphine-addicted rats in an enclosure 200 times the size of a typical lab rat cage, with lots of food and wheels to play in, use morphine responsibly, in moderation.

Author Description

Louie Helm is a Machine Learning Engineer

15 Responses to “Rat Park”

  1. June 15

    Scott Fowler

    The last time I read about this I wondered if maybe it didn’t help explain the whole “cocaine is far less addictive than crack” and other things in the “middle- and upper-class handle addiction better than lower class” category.

  2. June 15

    Jacob Coble

    BRB obtaining morphine

  3. June 15

    Romeo Stevens

    A counterpoint to the optimism of the rat Park experiment is the Mouse Universe experiment.

  4. June 15

    Jacob Coble

    The end didn’t seem to support what I thought the comic was trying to support. It might actually be a really good idea to outlaw recreational drugs if people in bad conditions (like the impoverished) can still form crippling addictions. All this means is that the upper and middle classes would be fine if drugs weren’t outlawed.

    I also wasn’t sure about the final frame. It makes it sound like the homeless just aren’t optimistic enough. Perhaps that implication was not intended.

  5. June 15

    Scott Jackisch

    Louie, thanks for sharing this. A friend had previously told me about this study in relation to depression but I had forgotten to look it up.

    Romeo, I had to lookup the mouse universe experiment as well, but it seems that both studies point toward the importance of optimizing the environment.

    Rat Park also suggests that animal studies are being performed on stressed creatures which might be skewing the results. But it would be very expensive and logistically difficult to perform many experiments in rat-park-like environments.

  6. June 15

    Gregory Sizemore

    It’s largely the isolation from other rats. The rats in isolated cages are literally in pain. Like have the regions of the brain that are active in severe physical pain (and that morphibe acts on) activated. The “pain of loss” is just as real as the pain of getting your arm cut off. It’s less that they are forming an addiction and more that they are self medicating.

  7. June 15

    Misha Gurevich

    Why don’t we replicate this?

  8. June 15

    Divia Caroline Eden

    I bring this experiment up very frequently when talking about why I think it will work not to control my child.

  9. June 15

    Joshua Be

    this all makes a good point about why poorly done science is a public hazard.

  10. June 15

    Misha Gurevich

    Are you raising your kid in a living environment with a bunch of people of varying ages all together, and plenty of socializing? The rats did fine without control only if you don’t include very deliberate control of their environment

  11. June 16

    Noemy Sanchez

    sharing ! the evasive : IM IN A F!@#$%^& cage variable that so many seem to elude

  12. June 16

    Jonas Vollmer

    does anyone have the link to the original article?

  14. June 16

    Brent Dill

    Bugger this, I want a better world.

  15. June 16

    Divia Caroline Eden

    Misha, we’ve been trying to put together a kid-focused intentional community, and we have an interest group. We haven’t found a place that works for enough of yet to move yet. I do think having kids of varying ages around is already awesome for her and will be increasingly important for her as she gets older (she’s 20 months now).