Researchers Develop VR Goggles For Mice

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a set of low-cost VR goggles for lab mice. Called MouseGoggles, the VR headsets will allows scientists to provide immersive virtual environments for the mice while capturing fluorescent images of the rodents' brain activity. Phys.Org reports: The goggles -- which dwarf the tiny mice in size -- were built using low-cost, off-the-shelf components like smartwatch displays and tiny lenses, researchers said. About a decade ago, researchers began rigging up clunky projector screens for mice as a means of creating virtual reality environments, but these devices frequently created so much light and noise that they spoiled experiments, researchers said. 'The more immersive we can make that behavioral task, the more naturalistic of a brain function we're going to be studying,' senior researcher Chris Schaffer, a professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell, said in a news release.

The new VR setup, called MouseGoggles, requires a mouse to stand on a ball-shaped treadmill with its head fixed in place. The headset is attached to its head and held in place with a rod while the mouse skitters about on the treadmill. To see if the headset worked, researchers projected the image of an expanding dark blotch that appeared to be approaching the mice. 'When we tried this kind of a test in the typical VR setup with big screens, the mice did not react at all,' Isaacson said. 'But almost every single mouse, the first time they see it with the goggles, they jump. They have a huge startle reaction. They really did seem to think they were getting attacked by a looming predator.'

The researchers also examined two key brain regions to make sure the VR images were working properly. Results from the primary visual cortex confirmed that the goggles form sharp, high-contrast images that mice can see, and readings from the hippocampus confirmed that mice are successfully mapping the virtual environment provided them. These VR goggles could be used to help study brain activity that occurs as mammals -- be they mice or men -- move around their environment, potentially giving researchers new insights into disorders like Alzheimer's disease, the study's authors said. The research has been published in the journal Nature Methods.

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