Researchers have developed a pair of virtual reality goggles that can plunge the rodents into various scenarios, from navigating mazes to experiencing the threat of a predator. While VR has been used in mouse experiments for years, the researchers say this has typically involved placing the animals on a treadmill in front of a large screen displaying a digital scene, with their heads fixed in place to allow study of their brains.
By contrast, the new setup, involves a pair of lenses and screens mounted on stands either side of a mouse’s head, providing each eye with a 180-degree field of view. Again, the mouse’s head is fixed in place and it can navigate the virtual environment using the treadmill. The team says the new approach not only allows mice to see the virtual environment in 3D and eliminates visual clues of the lab but offers a way to present virtual images, for example, of a hovering hawk.
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