says the study’s lead author, Jason Moore, a former UCLA postdoctoral scholar who is now at New York University.
Virtual Reality (VR) in Neurons
The scientists thus studied rats in a virtual reality maze to understand individual neurons in each animal’s hippocampus. The rats were encouraged to navigate through the maze to find their reward, a drop of sugar water.
This VR technology (developed in Mehta’s lab) specifically keeps the animals comfortable and avoids causing dizziness and other symptoms that other VR systems can trigger.
It was observed that hippocampal neurons encoded multiple aspects of the animal’s location where it is in space, the angle of its body relative to its reward, and how far it has moved along its path a phenomenon called “multiplexing.”
Neuroplasticity and Learning
It is known that process of neural activity changes – neuroplasticity is mediated by a neurochemical called NMDA, which is a common target for drugs used to treat neurological disorders.
In the present study, it was also observed that on injecting the animals with substances to inhibit their NMDA, in turn, impair their performance in the maze.
“Remarkably, neuroplasticity was far greater in the virtual reality environment than in simpler, real-world mazes. Further, this boosted neuroplasticity was related to performance,” says Mehta, a UCLA professor of neurology, neurobiology, and physics.
The team anticipates conducting similar research on rats and on humans with memory impairment, to test whether virtual reality can be used for early diagnosis and to evaluate the effectiveness of medications.
Source: Medindia
