Shallow Water Maze
Shallow Water Maze - Related Videos
07:47
Shallow Water (Paddling) Variants of Water Maze Tests in Mice
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Cited by 22 •
2013
Mice can swim, but many strains appear to find this activity stressful. To overcome this problem mazes have been devised where escape from shallow water is used to motivate behaviour. These have been demonstrated to support learning at least as good as the traditional and widely used Morris water maze.
07:42
The Morris Water Maze
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2023
The Morris water maze is one of the most widely used behavioral tests for studying spatial learning and memory. In the initial phases of this task, rodents must swim to a platform to escape from a pool of water. The platform is then hidden under the water’s surface, so that the animal is required to remember it’s location in order to escape.This simple yet powerful maze design can be used to assay cognitive function, study animal models of neurodegenerative disease, and test potential drug...
04:45
Morris Water Maze Experiment
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Cited by 223 •
2008
The Morris water maze is a well-accepted tool used to document the involvement of the hippocampus in a behavioral task.
02:35
The Water Maze with Platform Relocation: A Method to Assess Working Memory
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2023
In this video, we describe the Morris water maze test with platform relocation, a navigational task used to study working memory in rodents.
10:24
Morris Water Maze Test: Optimization for Mouse Strain and Testing Environment
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Cited by 57 •
2015
This manuscript describes a Morris water maze (MWM) protocol tailored for use with a commonly used mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. The MWM is widely used in transgenic mouse models. Implementation of a procedure sensitive to the background strain of the mouse model is essential for detecting group differences.
FAQs
Platform visibility changes the information available during navigation. A submerged platform requires the animal to use environmental cues to guide its search, whereas a visible platform provides a detectable escape target. Comparing these conditions can help researchers determine whether an intervention alters spatial learning specifically or produces a broader change in task performance.
Escape latency shows how quickly an animal reaches the platform, while path length indicates how efficiently it navigates. Search strategy adds information about how the animal approaches the task, and probe-trial performance evaluates memory after repeated training. Considering these measures together gives a more complete picture than relying on escape time alone.
Repeated trials reveal how performance changes with experience. A progressive reduction in escape latency or path length can indicate learning, while persistent inefficient searching may signal impaired acquisition or altered behavioral strategy. Trial-by-trial patterns also help distinguish a single poor performance from a consistent difference in spatial learning or memory.
The task combines spatial navigation with motivated escape, so performance reflects both the ability to use environmental cues and the animal’s engagement with the escape goal. This combination makes the assay behaviorally informative, but results should be interpreted across several measures, including search strategy and path length, rather than treating latency as a pure memory measure.
Researchers place a rodent in a shallow pool containing a submerged or visible escape platform, then assess its search and escape behavior across repeated trials. They record measures such as latency, path length, and search strategy, followed by probe-trial performance when appropriate. Consistent trial conditions allow changes in learning and memory to be compared across groups.
This assay is useful when researchers need to examine spatial learning, memory impairment, or behavioral flexibility in rodents. It can be applied to studies of neurological disease, genetic manipulation, environmental conditions, and potential therapeutics. Because outcomes include both acquisition measures and probe-trial performance, the method can help evaluate changes in hippocampus-dependent cognition.