Compared to the real world,
60% of neurons in the hippocampus shut
down in virtual reality.
- Part of the challenge right now
in VR is if you go in and
you're just seeing things and you're not
hearing things that correlate with that,
that really upsets your inner ear and
your brain starts to go a little whack-o.
- So we thought very simply that,
hey, we input the write in virtual reality
What's the difference between television
and virtual reality?
We all know where the TV is sits
somewhere and stuffs happens there.
Virtual reality,
reacts to you on a moment to moment basis.
That's the big difference.
Watch your feet.
So this is the virtual reality machine.
And now the sounds and
light from the world outside are cut off.
How is the brain creating space?
We all agree on it, we all take it for
granted that space exists.
That's what got us into virtual reality
because that's where you can manipulate
space.
So that I could sit, so
that's a giant ball.
That in turn is picked up
by a bunch of sensors around it,
goes to computer outside the room.
So once the light is in,
the image is everywhere around it.
Next order of the virtual reality
apparatus was the real world.
So this is the real world place.
The virtual room and
the real room are the same.
If there was a neuron that was active here
in the real room, will it be active in
the same place in the virtual room?
What we're going to see now.
(Music)
Is the actual data while there was
a rat running in the real world.
In this case,
the rat was running around in this maze.
This neuron was active.
And the rat went to only one place,
nowhere else.
Within virtual reality,
we can decide what tells the rat where he
is in all this space?
Never expected what was going to come out.
And this is a rat actually running
the maze in virtual reality.
This neurons active everywhere.
There is no map here.
It's just a mess compared to the real
world 60% of neurons of the hippocampus
shutdown in virtual reality.
(Music)
Same rat, same reward.
He seems perfectly happy.
I haven't seen
any other manipulations people have done.
Which causes such a massive shutdown,
unless it's some pathological disease.
This abnormal activity pattern
that happens in the hippocampus,
can it rewire the brain in some funky way,
so that it has long-term consequences?
Good or bad, I don't know.
(Music)
- This is actually a disaster
training site.
The drones are going to have to be smart
enough to follow them.
It's like going between buildings or
through trees, we use these very small
drones because they're safe.
In a virtual space though,
we can make them look like huge drones and
we can simulate large camera systems or
other types of sensors.
Movies, television even our phone
that information is at arms link and
we can bring it close but
still, there's a boundary for that.
The difference in VR
is te lack of the proscenium and
that a profoundly different relationship.
That the human
ends up having with the information.
That is a relationship that we haven't
had before other than with the physical
world that we're in right now.
In the not too distant future some people
will be spending eight to trn,
12 hours a day in VR because it'll be part
of their job.
We were worried about television
in the 50s and 60s and kids.
We were worried about computer games in
the 90s, the world didn't end because of
television.
But we want to try and
create a world without digital regrets.
- We believe within ten years we'll be
able to figure out how is it the brain
is creating that perception of space.
The puzzle is,
why did that neuron fire here?
Lot's of funky stuff is
going on under the hood.
(Music)
- The next year I went up and stood in
some of the track where you launch.
Looked down the track and there was no
sense of any fear or trepidation.
That's when I had in mind to come
back and do it again.
- Welcome back to
the Bonneville Salt Flats.