The mouse moves through the virtual world of a video game with the help of a Styrofoam ball that floats on compressed air.THOMAS HAINMÜLLER, MARLENE BARTOS Researchers looked into the brains of live mice experiencing a virtual environment to see how neurons were altered through the process of memory consolidation, according to research published June 6 in Nature.
A look into memory: A video recording shows neurons begin to flash as soon as they are activated.THOMAS HAINMÜLLER, MARLENE BARTOS
“As the mouse is getting to know its environment, we use a special microscope to look from the outside into its brain and we record the activities of its nerve cells on video,” Thomas Hainmüller, a coauthor on the study, says in a statement. He and his colleague found that the mouse’s location within the game would trigger specific neurons among a group of cells that...
See “Virtual Reality May Revolutionize Brain Science”
T. Hainmueller, M. Bartos, “Parallel emergence of stable and dynamic memory engrams in the hippocampus,” Nature, doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0191-2, 2018.
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