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Lab Mice Die After Drugs, Disco
Mon Aug 19, 7:49 AM ET

LONDON (AP) - The government on Monday reprimanded scientists who plied mice with drugs and loud dance music to study the effect on their brains.

The Home Office said it was taking "infringement action" against Cambridge University researchers who injected mice with the stimulant methamphetamine and subjected them to loud music, including tracks by dance act The Prodigy.

Several mice died and others suffered brain damage in the experiment, whose results were published in the journal NeuroReport last year.

Animal rights activists condemned the experiment. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection called it "tasteless and horrific."

The experiment was part of a wider study looking at the effect of amphetamine on a the striatum, a brain region that degenerates in Huntington's disease, a fatal, inherited brain disorder.

The findings suggested that loud pulsating noise like that found in dance clubs could intensify the drug's toxic effects.

Researchers studied 238 mice, injecting half with salt and half with the drug. While the mice injected with salt fell asleep when music was played, the drugged mice appeared to jiggle backward and forward.

Scientists found that the drugged mice suffered more speed-induced brain damage than normal. Seven mice who listened to the Prodigy died, as did four who were played music of a similar tempo by Bach.

The Home Office, the government department responsible for overseeing rules for animal research, did not say what form of action had been taken against the scientists.