In my research on the rat visual system, I have been designing an apparatus that would allow me to record neuronal responses to visual stimuli in freely moving rats. Most visual neuroscience experiments are now performed on restrained animals, who are usually treated with different drugs to suppress movement (anesthetics, muscle relaxants). But as anyone who has tried reading while falling asleep knows, just because your eyes are open does not mean that information is getting through to the brain. It makes more sense to study how neurons respond to images when the research subject is awake and paying attention.

While few researchers are studying vision in unrestrained rats today, I was surprised to find that the basic setup I have been working on for my experiments had already been created — in 1980’s Soviet Russia.

Working at the Moscow State University, Sergei Girman wanted to study the visual system in freely moving animals. So Girman chose to perform his experiments on rats, noting two features that made them convenient to use –  “the eyes in this animal are relatively immobile,” making it easy to know where they are looking (researchers go through a lot of trouble training a monkey to look at computer monitors in visual experiments), “while the visual analyzer is well developed” (analyzer being perhaps the fashionable word of the time to refer, in this case, to the visual areas of the brain).