The software desk
Latency is the headline. The swim path is the story.
A video course on the water maze and five other classic tests, told through what the tracker actually records.
Image: credit
Every water maze trial ends with a number, usually seconds to platform. It's a fine number. It just can't tell you whether the animal remembered the place or simply worked out that circling at the right distance from the wall gets the job done.
These six short films walk through the water maze, radial arm, open field, T-maze and Barnes maze, then get stuck into the analysis: heading, proximity, thigmotaxis, chaining and strategy. Each page carries the full script, chapters and a shot list, so you can read along or skip ahead.
Explore
On this site
Choosing water maze software without regrets
A practical checklist for Morris water maze software: tracking quality, analysis depth, strategy detection, calibration and open data export.
Morris water maze
How does a pool of cloudy water tell us whether a rat has a map in its head?
Virtual Morris water maze
Can we put a person in the same test we give a rat, without the water?
Radial arm maze
How do we tell working memory from reference memory in one test?
Open field test
What can an empty box tell us about anxiety and movement?
T-maze
How does one left-or-right choice reveal memory?
Barnes maze and other HVS-tracked mazes
What if you want a spatial test without swimming?
Watch
How to set a time slice for Morris water maze analysis in HVS Image
A two-minute look at time slices, the trick for catching an animal that changes its mind halfway through a trial.
Video from the HVS Image channel on YouTube. It's loaded in privacy-enhanced mode and only plays when you press play.
From the journals
Recently in the pool
Three new studies where the tracker had plenty to say. Our summaries, their originals.
Too much salt, and older mice lose their way
Twelve-month-old male mice ate chow with 8% salt or a normal 0.5% for two months, ten per group, with testers blinded. The salty group learned the water maze more slowly, with gaps opening on days four and five, and did worse on every probe measure: crossings, time over the old platform spot, distance and target-quadrant time. Swim speed and open-field behaviour didn't differ, which is exactly the control you want before calling it a memory effect. The authors link the deficit to more amyloid-beta and a mitochondrial clean-up response that tried, and failed, to keep up. Published in Frontiers in Neurology.
Frontiers in Neurology
Read the original at Bioengineer.orgIcariin and the stressed nucleolus
Icariin, the main active compound of the herb Herba Epimedii, was tested in APP/PS1 mice and in cultured microglia. In the water maze (four trials a day for four days, then a probe and a contraposition exploration test), treated mice crossed the old platform spot more often and swam distances closer to healthy controls, though the time to find the platform didn't clearly improve. The authors connect the effect to relief of nucleolar stress, the cell's ribosome factory under strain.
Read the original at Bioengineer.orgAfter blood loss and rescue, memory hinges on microglia
Male mice that survived haemorrhagic shock and resuscitation were tested on object recognition at day 31 and in the water maze from day 32. They took longer to find the platform, crossed its old spot less and spent less time in the target quadrant, while swimming at normal speed. Blocking the NLRP3 inflammasome in microglia brought performance back. Published in Behavioral and Brain Functions.
Behavioral and Brain Functions
Read the original at Bioengineer.org