2023-12-14 06:30:00
Why might only humans benefit from technological progress, and in particular virtual reality? This is the question asked by American researchers from Northwestern University, in Illinois (United States). To observe how the mice they study react to a certain environment or a specific situation, they made them virtual reality glasses!
Because experiments usually carried out using screens are not sufficiently effective. Small rodents – known for their intelligence – are no fools. They spot the inconsistencies in these devices and do not react as naturally as if they were really immersed in the environment or situation presented to them.
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A 180 degree field of view for each eye
“It takes a lot of training just to get the mice to focus on the screens and ignore the laboratory around them,” says Daniel Dombeck, one of the scientists. However, it is impossible to immerse the mice in a real environment, because it would be too difficult to design a device that would observe their neuronal activity in real time while they were moving.
Virtual reality glasses, which provide each eye with a 180-degree field of vision, both circumvent this difficulty and fool the mice, which move on a treadmill during the experiments, to obtain more reliable statistics. on their neuronal activity.
The team of scientists noticed that mice equipped with virtual reality glasses reacted in the same way as those exposed to the same scene in reality. “We followed the same learning patterns as in the past, but the mice with the glasses learned faster […] After the first session, they might already complete the task. They knew where to run and looked for the right places to get rewards,” observed Daniel Dombeck. He hopes that the device, inexpensive and relatively simple to set up, will become more widely used in neurobiology research laboratories.
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