Scientists have developed tiny virtual reality goggles for mice that create realistic worlds. This technology allows them to study the animals' brain activity in a variety of scenarios.
The researchers believe that this technology could eventually lead to simulations that are indistinguishable from the real world. This would be a major breakthrough in our understanding of the brain.
For the past 20 years, Daniel Dombeck and his colleagues at Northwestern University have been using rudimentary virtual reality to study the way that mice's brains work.
However, their previous methods were limited by the fact that the machines used to observe brain patterns were too large to be attached to freely moving mice.
The new goggles solve this problem by creating a convincing virtual world that the mouse can experience while it is moving freely. This allows the researchers to study brain activity in a much more natural setting.
Published on December 8 in the journal Neuron, the research represents the inaugural instance in which scientists have employed a virtual reality (VR) system to replicate an overhead threat.
"For the past 15 years, we have been using VR systems for mice," said Northwestern's Daniel Dombeck, the study's senior author.
"So far, labs have been using big computers or projection screens to surround an animal. For humans, this is like watching a TV in your living room. You still see your couch and your walls. There are cues around you telling you that you aren't inside the scene. Now think about putting on VR goggles, like the Oculus Rift, that take up your full vision. You don't see anything but the projected scene, and a different scene is projected into each eye to create depth information. That's been missing for mice."
