Now they can eat all of the virtual cheese they please! Just have to figure out how to get them into a sleek jumpsuit. But really, here’s hoping it has so actual benefits to studying the brain.
They should be OK as long as they don’t wear them while driving.
Interesting. Mice and rats have very poor vision compared to humans. While moving around they use touch and smell more than vision. They also leave drops of urine to help tell where they’ve been. I would think providing only visual input would give them quite limited knowledge of the simulated world they are supposed to be navigating, or even confuse them.
I think the next step wouid be other senses.
Quite an advancement since the days of 3D glasses on praying mantises.
I believe rats (talking Rattus norvegicus vs. Mus musculus, not sure about other species) urine mark as a sexual signal mainly. IME mice are more likely to piss everywhere.
They only have two cone types like most mammals, but their short-wavelength cone goes more into the ultraviolet range than ours do, and can possibly “see” urine.
Based on a couple of decades experience with 23 pet rats, I’d say that brown (Norwegian) rats do piss everywhere. Not a lot of volume, but they leave drops of urine very frequently while they walk around, on whatever surface they’re walking on, including their owner.