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First published online January 25, 2005
Journal of Experimental Biology 208, 561-569 (2005)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2005
doi: 10.1242/jeb.01371

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Rats are able to navigate in virtual environments

C. Hölscher¹, A. Schnee², H. Dahmen^2,*, L. Setia³ and H. A. Mallot²

¹ School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Ulster, Coleraine BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland
² Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Biology, Tübingen University, Auf der Morgenstelle 28, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
³ University of Freiburg, Chair of Pattern Recognition and Image Processing, Georges Köhler Allee 52, 79110 Freiburg, Germany

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: hansjuergen.dahmen{at}uni-tuebingen.de)

Accepted 8 November 2004

Virtual reality (VR) systems are useful tools that enable users to alter environmental settings and the location of landmarks in an accurate and fast way. Primates have been shown to be able to navigate in virtual environments. For rodents, however, all previous attempts to develop VR systems in which rats behave in the same way as in corresponding 3-D environments have failed. The question arises as to whether, in principle, rodents can be trained to navigate in a properly designed virtual environment (VE), or whether this peculiarity is limited to primates and humans. We built a virtual reality set-up that takes the wide-angle visual system of rats into account. We show for the first time that rats learn spatial tasks in this VE quite readily. This set-up opens up new opportunities for investigations of information processing in navigation (e.g. the importance of optic flow or vestibular input).

Key words: virtual reality, spatial, memory, learning, rat

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