Air-Track: a real-world floating environment for active sensing in head-fixed mice

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Science
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Natural behavior relies on integrated sensory and motor feedback.
• Studying neural correlates of natural behavior often requires head-fixed preparations.
• Existing head-fixed systems (virtual reality, treadmills) struggle with multimodal realism and complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce Air-Track, an accessible head-fixed behavioral environment.
• To enable natural, multimodal behavior for neuroscience research.
• To facilitate brain activity monitoring during natural behaviors.

Main Methods:

• Developed Air-Track: a lightweight, air-floated maze for head-fixed mice.
• Implemented tasks: Go/No-Go and two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) in a plus maze.
• Utilized a camera system for tracking mouse movement and calculating reaction times.

Main Results:

• Mice rapidly adapted to controlling the Air-Track maze.
• Mice effectively used visual, auditory, and tactile cues for task performance.
• The system allowed for precise measurement of reaction times in sensory discrimination tasks.

Conclusions:

• Air-Track provides a cost-effective and easy-to-build solution for natural behavior studies.
• The system supports multimodal sensory feedback tightly coupled with motor actions.
• Air-Track is suitable for integration with various brain activity monitoring and manipulation techniques.