New VR Technology Offers Fresh Insights into Neural Activity

In recent years, mice have entered a new arena – virtual reality – and now Cornell University researchers have built mini VR headsets to more fully immerse them.

The team's MouseGoggles were created using low-cost, off-the-shelf components, such as smartwatch displays and tiny lenses, and track the mouse's eye movements and changes in pupil size.

The technology has the potential to help reveal the neural activity that informs spatial navigation and memory function, giving researchers new insights into disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and its potential treatments.

The research was led by Chris Schaffer, professor of biomedical engineering, and Ian Ellwood, assistant professor in neurobiology and behavior.

"It's a rare opportunity, when building tools, that you can make something that is experimentally much more powerful than current technology, and that is also simpler and cheaper to build," Isaacson said. "It's bringing more experimental power to neuroscience, and it's a much more accessible version of the technology, so it could be used by a lot more labs."

Beginning about a decade ago, researchers began rigging up cumbersome – and quite costly – projector screens for mice to navigate virtual-reality environments, but the apparatuses are often clunky, and the resulting light pollution and noise can disrupt the experiments.

The more immersive we can make that behavioral task, the more naturalistic of a brain function we're going to be studying."

Chris Schaffer, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University

A mouse stands on a treadmill, with its head fixed in place, as it peers into a pair of eye pieces. The mouse's neural activity patterns can then be fluorescently imaged.

The researchers are looking to further develop the goggles, with a lightweight, mobile version for larger rodents, such as tree shrews and rats, that can include a battery and onboard processing. Schaffer also sees the potential of incorporating more senses, such as taste and smell, into the VR experience.

"I think five-sense virtual reality for mice is a direction to go for experiments," he said, "where we're trying to understand these really complicated behaviors, where mice are integrating sensory information, comparing the opportunity with internal motivational states, like the need for rest and food, and then making decisions about how to behave."

The research was supported by the Cornell Neurotech Mong Family Fellowship program; the BrightFocus Foundation Alzheimer's disease fellowship program; the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation; and the National Institutes of Health.