Roadmap to Mental Health: Thank you, Dr. Elisabeth Murray!
In observance of National Mental Health Awareness Month, we honor Dr. Elisabeth Murray for her foundational brain research with monkeys, and counter PETA's claims about her pioneering work...with the facts. Thank you, Dr. Elisabeth Murray!
Monkey “terror” tests?? Hardly…. Review the facts for yourself.
Murray EA and Rhodes SEV (2016) Monkeys without an amygdala. In: Living without an amygdala. Amaral DG and Adolphs R (eds.) Guilford Press, pp. 252-275.
Excerpts:
“…we compared unlearned responses of monkeys to spiders, as well as snakes, as a window on the neural bases of emotion—or, at least, defensive reactions. Although spiders do not prey on monkeys, they seem to produce innate avoidance responses in these animals, just as they do in some people. Using a task adapted from Mineka, Kier, and Price (1980), we pitted approach responses to obtain food against defensive responses engendered by a snake or spider, contrasted with responses to neutral objects…Our main measure of interest is food-retrieval latency, and we predicted that the presence of a snake or spider (relative to a neutral object) would slow a monkey’s retrieval of the food. On each trial of these tests, monkeys are confronted with a rectangular transparent box containing either one of several neutral objects, a rubber snake, or a rubber spider. A small piece of food is placed on the top of the box, near the edge farthest from the monkey. The monkey is allowed to retrieve the food at its own pace, within a limit of 30 seconds. The test is run only every other day for five days, so exposure to the snake and spider is relatively limited.”
“…On trials with neutral objects, all monkeys retrieved the food quickly, in just 2–3 seconds. In contrast, on trials with rubber snakes, normal monkeys hesitated for long periods and in many cases failed to retrieve the food altogether. As they hesitated, the monkeys expressed a variety of defensive responses, including withdrawal, head aversion, eye aversion, and freezing…Monkeys with amygdala lesions showed no such reactions. They retrieved the food very quickly when faced with snakes, with roughly the same latency as on trials with neutral objects. This effect was all the more striking given that on many trials, monkeys with amygdala lesions stared at the snake or tried to grasp it before retrieving the food…”
Excerpts from PETA’s own chronicle of their campaign against brain research hero, Dr. Elisabeth Murray, are below. Who’s terrorizing who? And why? How may baseless campaigns like this impact our medical future?
Excerpts from a PETA piece that states that I was “disturbed by what [I] saw in Murray’s lab”. I NEVER said this.
My comments about the dangers of the “dark age of detachment” have NEVER applied to my experiences with Dr. Murray. All of our animals were named and we were free to bond with them as strongly as we liked. The actual context of this reference can be read here: Ain’t no shame in namin’.
We all believe in doing the most human-relevant science possible. Non-animal alternatives will continue to be valuable in this regard, but they just cannot fully replace our need to study health and disease in animals…yet. Unfortunately, PETA’s claim that Dr. Murray can use organoids instead of monkeys to achieve her study objectives…is NOT TRUE.
Thank you, Dr. Francis Collins, for your compassion and for sharing the truth with our lawmakers!
Read about the value and limitations of human brain organoids to study Alzheimer’s Disease here: Can you give a brain organoid Alzheimer’s?
Dr. Cindy Buckmaster in the OR performing brain surgery
