An Immersive Virtual Reality System for Rodents in Behavioral and Neural Research

Context cognition involves abstractly deriving meaning from situational information in the world and is an important psychological function of higher cognition. However, due to the complexity of contextual information processing, along with the lack of relevant technical tools, little remains known about the neural mechanisms and behavioral regulation of context cognition. At present, behavioral training with rodents using virtual reality techniques is considered a potential key for uncovering the neurobiological mechanisms of context cognition. Although virtual reality technology has been preliminarily applied in the study of context cognition in recent years, there remains a lack of virtual scenario integration of multi-sensory information, along with a need for convenient experimental design platforms for researchers who have little programming experience. Therefore, in order to solve problems related to the authenticity, immersion, interaction, and flexibility of rodent virtual reality systems, an immersive virtual reality system based on visual programming was constructed in this study. The system had the ability to flexibly modulate rodent interactive 3D dynamic experimental environments. The system included a central control unit, virtual perception unit, virtual motion unit, virtual vision unit, and video recording unit. The neural circuit mechanisms in various environments could be effectively studied by combining two-photon imaging and other neural activity recording methods. In addition, to verify the proposed system′s performance, licking experiments were conducted with experimental mice. The results demonstrated that the system could provide a new method and tool for analyzing the neural circuits of the higher cognitive functions in rodents.