DomeVR: Immersive virtual reality for primates and rodents.

DomeVR: Immersive virtual reality for primates and rodents.

Blog Article

Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments are a powerful tool to explore cognitive hand wipes individual packets processes ranging from memory and navigation to visual processing and decision making-and to do so in a naturalistic yet controlled setting.As such, they have been employed across different species, and by a diverse range of research groups.Unfortunately, designing and implementing behavioral tasks in such environments often proves complicated.To tackle this challenge, we created DomeVR, an immersive VR environment built using Unreal Engine 4 (UE4).

UE4 is a powerful game engine supporting photo-realistic graphics and containing a visual scripting language designed for use by non-programmers.As a result, virtual environments are easily created using drag-and-drop elements.DomeVR aims to make these features accessible to neuroscience experiments.This includes a logging and synchronization system to solve timing uncertainties inherent in UE4; an interactive GUI for scientists to observe subjects during experiments and adjust task parameters on the fly, and a dome projection system for full task immersion in non-human subjects.

These key features are modular and can easily be added individually mako shark toys into other UE4 projects.Finally, we present proof-of-principle data highlighting the functionality of DomeVR in three different species: human, macaque and mouse.