doing there and how does this affect their
perception of the world?” says Kristin.
Taking it one step closer to sci-fi,
FreemoVR also allows you to instanta-
neously switch the environment or the
object in mid-experiment to see how the
animal reacts when it is suddenly “tele-
ported” to a new virtual location. The
team tested this by creating two portals
where the fish could decide between a
checkerboard world and a plant world. In
another scenario, they added a twist of
swimming together with virtual fish or a
swarm of video game “space invaders” to
see how the animal’s social responsive-
ness influenced its decisions.
Although FreemoVR was able to con-
vince the animals in the tests, it still has
some kinks to work out. Unlike a Star
Trek holodeck, the cues are still only visu-
al and the animal’s interactions with the
arena itself may influence its behavior.
It is also limited by the number of
images shown per second on consumermarketed display units (like projectors,
monitors) which currently peak at 120
per second. Animals that are able to pro-
cess images at a greater rate per second
than the VR display unit is able to pro-
duce would see the illusion like a slowed-
down movie reel. The team already test-
ed this by artificially prolonging the time
between images. They found that the
fruit flies, which can very quickly process
images, stopped interacting with the vir-
tual object like they would a natural one.
But this limitation should subside with
advances in consumer electronics.TREKKIES TURN ENTREPRENEURS
FreemoVR is an open-source software
and for the tech savvy behavioral biolo-
gist, it is a great way to incorporate freely
moving animals in future experiments. It
is also scalable to fit your model organism
of interest. For biologists who might not
have spent enough time in coding classes,
things just got easier. A startup, Loopbio,
founded by the lead authors on the publi-
cation, Dr. John Stowers and Max
Hofbauer, is now helping laboratories
around the world set up their own
FreemoVR systems.
“The flexibility of the system is what
makes it so special. You can have an idea
for a new object or experiment and with-
in 20 minutes you have designed what
you need and are ready to start,” says
Max, CEO of Loopbio. The company is
providing gear to set up FreemoVR to labs
that want to start investigating complex
behavioral questions – and who knows?
They may be writing the script for the
next generation of iconic sci-fi.The researchers can trick a fruit fly (red dot) with
visual motion stimuli to fly an infinity symbol
(top right). Below, a real fish is shown swimming
in a swarm of video game space invaders.