Rats Match Humans in Decision-Making That Involves Combining Different Sensory Cues

The next time you set a trap for that rat running around in your basement, here's something to consider: you are going up against an opponent whose ability to assess the situation and make decisions is statistically just as good as yours.   A Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) study that compared the ability of humans and rodents to make perceptual decisions based on combining different modes of sensory stimuli -- visual and auditory cues, for instance -- has found that just like humans, rodents also combine multisensory information and exploit it in a "statistically optimal" way -- or the most efficient and unbiased way possible.
Science Daily, Mar. 13, 2012

David Raposo, et al.

Multisensory decision-making in rats and humans. Journal of Neuroscience, March 14, 2012 DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4998-11.2012