Scientists Inject Ferrets' Brains With Rabies to Study ... Vision?

When ferrets get a rabies shot in a neurobiology lab, they don't get infected with the virus--or even inoculated against it. They get a brain hack that might just explain how your brain handles vision, and maybe even your other senses, too. In a lab at Dartmouth, scientists are experimenting with targeted injections of a modified rabies virus into the brains of ferrets--essentially allowing them to control how the animal responds to simple visual patterns. The goal is to understand the brain's enormously complex visual processing system. Are these guys just screwing around?