Studying the brain activity of a mouse while it scurries around different virtual reality scenarios typically requires cumbersome equipment, but the invention of miniature goggles may have solved that problem
By Matthew Sparkes
8 December 2023
A scenario that a mouse might see as it wears the virtual reality goggles
Dom Pinke
Tiny virtual reality goggles for mice create convincing worlds that allow scientists to study the animals’ brain activity in a range of scenarios. The technology takes rodent neuroscience closer to The Matrix, towards a simulation that is indistinguishable from the real world, according to the researchers
For around 20 years, Daniel Dombeck at Northwestern University in Illinois and his colleagues have used rudimentary virtual reality to learn more about the way that mice’s brains work.
Machines that observe brain patterns are too large to be attached to freely moving mice. Instead, the team placed screens showing a virtual reality world around a mouse as it was held inside such a machine and then put it on a treadmill. The researchers could then create a virtual world where the mouse navigated any environment they designed.
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“We can have them run through virtual mazes, imaging their brains to see which neurons are forming memories and remembering where they are,” says Dombeck. “[But] it’s a flat thing that the animal is looking at and there’s no depth perception, and the mice can see stuff that isn’t part of the projection. So there’s all these cue conflicts that are around and they’re not, we think, fully engaged and immersed in the environment. They’re not fully tricked.”
To solve that problem, the researchers have now created tiny goggles that cut out everything from a mouse’s field of view except the virtual world, with a different screen for each eye to create convincing depth perception. They believe this will allow them to run more accurate experiments, as mice will be more convinced of the illusion and therefore behave more naturally.