International Business Times - Virtual reality creates new research for neuroscience

The classic rodent in a maze might be a thing of the past in neuroscience as a growing collection of researchers are using virtual reality programs to test humans instead.

Veronique Bohbot, PhD, of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University, is one of those using state-of-the-art technologies for neuroscience. Bohbot and her team have created numerous virtual environments, on several different platforms, and allow humans to navigate them in order to study how the brain remembers certain settings.

"I'm testing the rodent model with humans. Instead of rodents navigating mazes, we have humans sitting at the computer looking for objects. They need to find certain objects at the end of a path. We've built this star-looking maze and allow them to visualize themselves in the center of the star. It's just people on a computer, with a standard 17 inch desktop screen," Bohbot said.