Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 22, 2025
Flat-floored Air-lifted Platform: A New Method for Combining Behavior with Microscopy or Electrophysiology on Awake Freely Moving Rodents
Published on: June 29, 2014
The Dome: A virtual reality apparatus for freely locomoting rodents
Manu S Madhav1, Ravikrishnan P Jayakumar2, Shahin G Lashkari3
1Mind/Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA; Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA; Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA; School of Biomedical Engineering, Djawad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, University of British Columbia, BC, Canada.
Abstract:
The cognitive map in the hippocampal formation of rodents and other mammals integrates multiple classes of sensory and motor information into a coherent representation of space. Here, we describe the Dome, a virtual reality apparatus for freely locomoting rats, designed to examine the relative contributions of various spatial inputs to an animal's spatial representation. The Dome was designed to preserve the range of spatial inputs typically available to an animal in free, untethered locomotion while providing the ability to perturb specific sensory cues. We present the design rationale and corresponding specifications of the Dome, along with a variety of engineering and biological analyses to validate the efficacy of the Dome as an experimental tool to examine the interaction between visual information and path integration in place cells in rodents.
