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Of Mice and Scientists: Wire You Surprised?
Unlocking the secrets of rat synapses
By Ed Goldman
A popular children’s story explores what happens “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” Scientists have now upgraded that to what happens if you show a mouse video snippets of “The Matrix.”
In studying a tiny portion of a mouse’s brain—which sounds redundant, doesn’t it?—seemingly sane grownups were able to create “the largest functional map of a brain to date—a diagram of the wiring connecting 84,000 neurons as they fire off messages,” according to an Associated Press story.
Swiss watching
If you’re wondering what those messages consist of, you’ve come to the right place: this column’s Mouse-Message Grokking and Openly Observing Division, also known as M-M GOOD. (Any similarity between the name of our think tank and the Campbell’s Soup tagline is not only coincidental but also yummy with Saltines.)
Here’s a transcript.
DATE: 4/16/25, 10 p.m.
FROM: Rupert Rodent, CLR (Certified Lab Rat)
TO: Vernon Vermin, Maze Master
RE: On Viewing “The Matrix”
Have you seen this mental cheese trap someone calls a movie? It’s supposed to sound really deep and mystical but it doesn’t help that the hero is played by someone called Keanu Reeves, who doesn’t look bright enough to open a bag of Cheetos without a user’s manual.
Not sure why the White-Smock People drugged me, wired me and forced me to watch it. Maybe they thought if I could figure it out, I’d tell them what the hell it was about. Just spit-balling here, but I’d say it’s about making a choice between the real world and A-I. Your thoughts?
DATE: 4/16/25, 10:20 p.m.
TO: Rupert Rodent, CLR (Certified Lab Rat)
FROM: Vernon Vermin, Maze Master
RE: On Viewing “The Matrix”
Right there with ya, Rupe. They hooked me up to watch the same damn thing and I figured it out even with half my circuits down. The only question I had afterward was: Are Keanu Reeves and Adam Driver the same dude? I think one of them was in “Megalopolis,” the movie that proves even a legendary director like Coppola has a sell-by date.
What’ve they got in mind for us the rest of the week?
DATE: 4/16/25, 10:45 p.m.
FROM: Rupert
TO: Vernon
No squeakin’ idea, m’mouse. I overheard one of the White-Smocks People marveling at how they’d traced our neurons as they communicated “via branch-like fibers through 500 million junctions called synapses.” I wrote that down. These clowns really talk like this.
All I know is they’re putting all the data together in, like, a 3-D reconstruction; and here’s the best part, Vern: it’s color-coded so they can monitor different brain circuitry. I guess they think if they can figure out how mice think, it’ll tell them how humans do. They don’t seem to realize how much more advanced mouse brains are than human ones!
DATE: 4/16/25, 10:48 p.m.
FROM: The Vernster
TO: The Rupester
Is that true, Rupe? What makes you say so?
DATE: 4/16/25, 11:00 p.m.
FROM: RR
TO: VV
How about, the fact that we’ve had this entire exchange by mental telepathy?
Gotta run. The local news is starting and my TiVo’s down. Something we could fix in a jiffy if someone had given us opposable thumbs. Meanwhile, I wish someone would just give me a friggin’ cookie.
Don’t forget! A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
