A VR goggle system, designed specifically for mice, could offer researchers a cost-effective approach to broader adoptions of VR methods in neuroscience.
The system, called MouseGoggles, is a miniaturised VR display for head-fixed mice, delivering independent, binocular visual stimulation over a wide field of view.
Neural recordings in thee visual cortex are used to validate the quality of image presentation, using recordings of the hippocampal brain region and identifying associative reward learning as well as innate fear responses in immersive VR experiences.
The open-source system was created by researchers at Cornell University. A study using the technology, titled MouseGoggles: an immersive virtual reality headset for mouse neuroscience and behavior is currently under peer review by Nature Journal.
The system is designed as a low cost, compact system with the aim of encouraging broader adoption of VR methods in neuroscience.
Writing on preprint platform, Research Square, the researchers said: “VR gives the experimenter full control over the subject’s visual experience and allows experimental manipulations infeasible with real-world experiments, including teleportation and visuomotor mismatch paradigms. VR with head-fixed mice has traditionally relied on panoramic displays composed of projector screens1,3 or arrays of LED displays positioned 10-30 cm away from the eyes to remain within the mouse’s depth of field. This necessitates displays which are orders of magnitude larger than the mouse, resulting in complex, costly, and light-polluting systems which can be challenging to integrate into many neural recording setups. Additionally, fixed experimental equipment (e.g., cameras, lick ports, microscope objectives) can obstruct the mouse’s visual field, potentially reducing immersion in the virtual environment.
“A potential benefit of MouseGoggles over panoramic displays is a greater degree of immersion in the virtual environment, as the headset effectively blocks irrelevant and conflicting visual stimuli. To determine whether innate behavioral responses can be elicited by more immersive head-fixed VR, we presented looming visual stimuli to naïve mice which had no prior experience with head-fixed displays. On the first presentation of a looming stimulus using MouseGoggles, nearly all mice displayed a head-fixed startle response (a rapid jump or kick, with an arched back and tucked tail – while a nearly identical experiment on a traditional projector-based VR produced no immediate startles. This response rapidly extinguished with repeated looming stimuli, an adaptation previously observed with defensive responses to looming in freely-walking mice.”