Mice actively seek better views to make visual decisions, virtual reality experiments show

Mice actively seek better views to make visual decisions, virtual reality experiments show

Animals don't experience the world passively. A hawk tilts its head to track prey. A person leans forward to read a sign. Scientists call this "active sensing": moving the body to gather better information. A specific version of active sensing is infotaxis, which describes how animals move strategically to maximize the information they gain from their surroundings. Whether mice use this strategy has remained an open question, despite their central role in neuroscience research.

Mice Use Strategic Infotaxis to Overcome Poor Vision

Mice utilize visual infotaxis, moving strategically to maximize information gain, to identify partially occluded objects inside a custom virtual reality arena. This active sensing behavior scales continuously with visual ambiguity, proving rodents rely on internal environmental models to actively gather visual data.