I'm paraphrasing here, but as I understand it, a rat could go off to college, drink several pitchers of beer a week, graduate with a 1.3 GPA, get a job in a dimly lit, windowless office, sit through interminable meetings led by insufferable managers, and still be able to regenerate enough brain cells to sing more than two consecutive lines of any given Top 40 song before dissolving into incomprehensible mumbling and humming. Human beings, meanwhile, were destined to live out the rest of their natural lives as hummers. But now scientists say that isn't the case it all. In a series of experiments at several major research facil- ities, neurobiologists have been tracing the fate of brain cells in adult marmoset monkeys. Much to their surprise, researchers have found that new brain cells are being generated in the monkeys' hippocampus, the area of the brain where long- term memories are formed.
Scientists say they fully expect that the same holds true for humans.
I can't speak for everyone, least of all the monkeys, but I think this is a lovely devel- opment. It's heartening, I suppose, to know that someone has finally come up with a way to bottle wisdom and put it on a convenience store shelf. But I think I'll save my money just the same and wait until scientists wrap up their research with the monkeys and tell us if there's a cheaper way to speed up the production of our brain cells. In the meantime, I think I'm going to take a little break from the rat race and find myself a nice, comfortable, old napping couch.