Virtual reality platform developed for context-dependent cognitive research in rodents - Medical Xpress

In a survey published online successful Neuroscience Bulletin, the researchers from Dr. Xu Chun's Lab and Dr. Wen Yunqing astatine the Institute of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence successful Brain Science and Intelligence Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and their collaborators, developed a high-performance virtual world (VR) level which is assembled from modular hardware and custom-written bundle with upgradability, providing a much economical and flexible instrumentality for context-dependent cognitive probe successful rodents.

In daily activities, animals request to respond to assorted biology contexts appropriately. It is important to survey discourse cognitive process arsenic it's intimately linked to aspects of behaviors. The biology discourse consists of assorted idiosyncratic elements and is enriched with multisensory information. Thus, it imposes large challenges to quantitatively power the discourse elements and rapidly power betwixt chiseled contexts.

VR exertion is instrumental successful studying neural mechanisms underlying environmental-context-modulated behaviors by simulating the real world with maximized controls of discourse elements portion being compatible with head-fixed neural recordings.

The researchers designed a high-performed VR level and its main hardware operation included six curved screens, a styrofoam cylinder, a question detector, the neural enactment signaling device, and peripheral functional modules which could beryllium assembled according to the experimental needs. Rapid show switching and interactive immersive VR acquisition were achieved done multi-thread processing of presumption detection, real-time surface update, peripheral instrumentality triggering and rodent behavioral parameters by custom-written software.

Using this VR platform, researchers trained mice to execute context-dependent cognitive tasks with rules ranging from favoritism to delayed-sample-to-match portion signaling thousands of hippocampus spot cells.

Compared with erstwhile experimental VR devices, the VR level developed successful this survey is flexible, wide applicable, cost-effective, and casual to use. Its lightweight bundle and upgradeable hardware modules tin beryllium assembled according to the needs of antithetic experimental tasks.

This survey preliminarily explores the relation of elements successful the discourse designation process and establishes a much convenient VR level to analyse context-dependent cognition with large-scale neural recording.

More information: Xue-Tong Qu et al, A Virtual Reality Platform for Context-Dependent Cognitive Research successful Rodents, Neuroscience Bulletin (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s12264-022-00964-0