Spatial cognition in a virtual reality home-cage extension for freely moving rodents.

Virtual reality (VR) environments are a powerful tool for the investigation of brain mechanisms. We introduce the Servoball, a VR treadmill for freely moving rodents. The Servoball is integrated with the animals’ group home cage. Single individuals voluntarily enter using automated access control. Training is highly time efficient, even for cognitively complex VR paradigms.