The secret to stopping a stroke in its tracks might lie in a lab rat’s whiskers. Researchers at the University of California Irvine wanted to see how a section of the brain called the cerebral cortex–the part involved with complex thought–responds during a stroke. So they took some rats, blocked arteries sending blood to their brains, and prepared to record what happened in the cerebral cortex when, inevitably, the rats had a stroke. But to their surprise, the rats were fine. Stroke never happened. Why not? Because of the rats’ whiskers. A rat’s whiskers, you see, have a strong connection to its cerebral cortex.