I’m Viktoria Krakenberg and I’m a behavioural biologist here at the University of Münster.
Basically, I research optimism and pessimism in mice.
With people, it’s easy. I think everyone is familiar with the example of putting
a glass half-filled with water in front of someone, and then asking if the glass
is half full or half empty. The optimist would say the glass is half full, while the pessimist would say
the glass is half empty, and we basically do the same thing with our mice.
Obviously not with a glass of water, we have to think of an experiment which is a bit more complicated than that.
We place the mouse in a box in front of a touchscreen. It can then see various symbols
displayed on the screen. When it sees a bar projected on the
bottom of the screen, it learns to touch on the right and get a large food reward.
And when the bar is shown at the top, it learns to touch on the left, but then receives
only a small reward. Once it has learned this association, then we can display a bar
in the middle of the screen and watch how the mouse interprets it – this is
somewhat analogous to the glass half full, which we humans are familiar with.
What fascinates me the most is that with our research, we can gain insight into
the emotions of animals. You can’t simply ask animals how they’re feeling, and
that’s why it’s exciting to come up with ways and means to discover this nonetheless.
I absolutely love being a researcher. I’m fascinated by the fact that you never stay in one place.
Every day there’s something new to discover.
And even if it doesn’t work out, you study where the problem might be
and develop new hypotheses which can help you move forward. Which means
it never gets boring, and that’s what I find very exciting about science.