Communications of the ACM
Rats Use Imagination to Navigate in VR
New research suggests rats can mentally navigate to locations they've visited before.
Credit: Pexels
Researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute tested whether rats, like humans, can use their thoughts to navigate a virtual environment.
They implanted a brain-machine interface in rats to record their hippocampal activity.
After having the rats navigate an on-screen virtual environment while running on a spherical treadmill, the researchers had them navigate the virtual reality (VR) arena using only their thoughts.
The brain-machine interface translated the rats' neural activity into on-screen motion, and they were rewarded when they recreated the hippocampal activity associated with a specific location.
From Smithsonian Magazine
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