US scientists develop VR headset for mice to let them feel being attacked by eagles

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(XR Navigation Network 2023年12月09日）虚拟现实可以让人类沉浸在非凡的空间中，无论是探索遥远的星系，还是在幻想的世界里奔跑。现在看来老鼠也可以了。

US researchers have developed a pair of special virtual reality head-mounted displays that allow rodents to enter various scenarios, such as navigating a maze, to experience the threat of predators.

Although virtual reality has been used in experiments with mice for years, researchers say this usually involves placing the animals in front of a large screen showing a digital scene.treadmilland hold the head in place to study their brains.

Daniel Dombeck, a professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, said the traditional approach has drawbacks because mice can still see the static laboratory environment as they walk on the treadmill.

"We think this reduces their immersion in the virtual world," he said. "In addition, the large screen cannot provide depth information, and the mice just see the same flat scene as we see when watching TV."

In contrast, this specially designed device mounts a pair of lenses and screens on brackets on either side of the mouse's head, giving each eye a 180-degree field of view. Likewise, the mouse's head is fixed in place, allowing it to navigate the virtual environment using a treadmill.

"The head-display prototype system we describe is a bit large for mice to carry around, but we plan to make a smaller version that mice can carry around in the future," Dombeck noted.

The team says this new method not only allows mice to see3DVirtual environments, which remove visual cues from the lab, can also provide a way to present virtual images from above, such as a circling eagle.

"In a real environment, this stimulus would cause mice to freeze or run away, which is what they would have to do if they were preyed on by birds in the wild," Dombeck explained.

The team's experiments showed that mice had the same response in a virtual reality head-mounted display system. When the mice froze, the activity of neurons related to navigation in the brain showed that they were in different positions.

"It's as if they were thinking about where they would prefer to be, somewhere safe and covered," Dombeck said, adding that the results may help explain how imagination occurs in the brain.

The team is also working to identify the neurons involved in memory when mice walk in a maze, and how the connections between them are modified to form memories.

"Answering these questions will help us understand how the brain knows our place in the world around us, how we form memories of these experiences, and ultimately how these memories degrade in neurodegenerative diseases," Dombeck noted.