Scientists have built tiny VR glasses for mice

Humans aren’t the only ones getting into the virtual reality craze. Scientists have just launched a new technology that allows mice to experience more realistic – and adorable – VR in the lab.

Cornell University researchers developed the technology, which they named MouseGoggles. In experiments with mice, the rodents appeared to respond vividly to simulated stimuli while wearing the glasses. The innovation should make it easier for scientists to perform animal studies involving VR.

As funny as the idea of ​​VR rodents sounds, there are real applications for it. Ideally, VR can allow scientists to simulate naturalistic environments for mice under more controlled conditions. Now, however, the most commonly used set-ups are quite clumsy, with mice often being placed on a treadmill while surrounded by computer or projection screens. These screens cannot cover the entire field of view of a mouse, and it can take a long time for the animal to react to the VR environment, if it ever does.

The Cornell researchers think their MouseGoggles are an important step up from standard VR mice. Rather than trying to create a mini-Oculus Rift from scratch, they built their system using tiny, low-cost parts borrowed from existing smartwatches and other devices. Like other VR systems, mice are placed on a treadmill to use the MouseGoggles. Their heads are held fixed to the goggles while they are fed visual stimuli.

“It definitely benefits from the pirate ethic of taking parts that are built for something else and then applying them to a new context,” lead scientist Matthew Isaacson, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell. said the Cornell Chronicle, a university press. “The perfect size display, as it turns out, for a mouse VR headset is almost already made for smart watches. We were lucky that we didn’t have to build or design anything from scratch, we could easily provide all the parts economy we need.”

To confirm the viability of their system, the researchers exposed the mice to different stimuli, all the while measuring their brain activity and observing their behavior. Through a series of tests, the researchers found that the mice actually seemed to see and respond to the VR as hoped. In one condition, for example, they tracked how mice reacted to a gradually approaching dark spot that might represent a potential predator.

“When we tried this kind of test in the typical VR setup with big screens, the mice didn’t react at all,” Isaacson said. “But almost all the mice, the first time they see it with the glasses, they jump. They have a big reaction of surprise. They really seem to think that they were attacked by an imminent predator.”

The results of the team were published earlier this month in the journal Nature Methods.

Developing more realistic VR for mice could have all kinds of benefits down the road, researchers say. Accurate VR experiments could allow scientists to better map and understand the brain activity of mice modeled to have Alzheimer’s, for example, especially regions related to spatial navigation and memory; It could also improve basic research studies testing potential treatments for brain disorders.

Issacson and his colleagues are not the only researchers who have recently created VR systems for mice. But they say theirs is the first to incorporate eye and pupil tracking. And I have already developed a light, mobile VR set-up that could be used with larger rodents such as mice or shrews. They also hope to include more updates in a future iteration, such as finding a way to simulate taste and smell.