Mice in Virtual Reality
October 16th, 2009I have been fascinated by “place cells” recently, and it seems the press has just caught on as well this week with many articles in major outlets covering the phenomena. I guess it takes a spectacle to get people to write headlines about science, and this VR setup for a mouse is just that.
Basically they are watching the mouse’s place neurons activate differently depending where it goes inside the virtual environment. The same patterns emerge when it returns to the same places.
I have read a similar story with fMRI and humans, but I guess what’s different here are direct neural sensors, and real time physical movement (it’s hard to get a mouse to use a joystick like the humans did). The physical movement piece is critical in learning how proprioception contributes to the activity.
There is also a video on the linked page, worth taking a peek at too.
(Via @kernull.)