| Description |
Mouse models are crucial to understanding not only sensory and cognitive neurological processes, but also diseases, disabilities, and responses to pharmacological or surgical treatments. Behavioral tests are essential assets in the description of these models. The Morris Water Maze is a common behavioral test tool used to measure spatial navigation and memory. We developed our own comparable Morris Water Maze following current standards. Standard tests were replicated including pre-training, spatial acquisition, spatial reference, and spatial reversal in order to determine the validity of our maze. All tests were performed with four C57BL/6 wild type mice. Our newly created maze also included the ability to perform a novel Rotational Cue Test. This test helped determine whether the navigation method used by the mice in the maze was Egocentric or Allocentric. Currently the navigation strategy is debated in the literature and needs to be determined in order to accurately describe behavior of mouse models. The Rotational Cues Test was performed by rotating all visual cues 90 degrees clockwise around the maze to a new quadrant position. Since this alteration did not affect the mice's ability to complete the maze, the mice had no dependence on the cues and the navigational strategy was concluded to be Egocentric. With this information, mouse models tested in the future can have their learning and cognitive patterns identified in accordance to the Egocentric Navigation method they are using to complete the maze. |
