Asahi.com
If you happen to have a monkey as a pet, let it watch television. It can help relieve the stress of captivity, according to Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute.
A research team led by Nobuo Masataka, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the institute, monitored the brain activities of a 3-year-old male rhesus macaque when it was shown video of a circus elephant, giraffe and a tiger performing.
Optical topography, which monitors blood flow in the brain, showed that when the monkey was watching the video, activities in a part of its frontal lobe became vigorous. In short, the monkey liked it.
In humans, the corresponding brain area is known to be “wired” to the part which causes a baby’s delight when it sees the smile of its mother.
The findings were carried in the Sunday edition of the Swiss online scientific journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.
