Virtual experimental arena for behavioral experiments on small vertebrates

In this study, we present a virtual experimental arena to perform behavioral experiments on small vertebrates. It consists of a 360° visual stimulation realized by four LC displays and an automated camera-based head tracking system. Based on these two components, visual stimuli are repositioned depending of the animal´s head position in a closed-loop approach. We present two algorithms to automatically perform robust head tracking on mice and compare their precision to manual tracking by a human observer.