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Morris Water Maze
The Morris water navigation task, also known as the Morris water maze (not to be confused with ''Water maze (neuroscience), water maze''), is a behavioral procedure mostly used with rodents. It is widely used in behavioral neuroscience to study spatial memory, spatial learning and memory. It enables learning, memory, and spatial working to be studied with great accuracy, and can also be used to assess damage to particular cortical regions of the brain. It is used by neuroscientists to measure the effect of neurocognitive disorders on spatial learning and possible neural treatments, to test the effect of lesions to the brain in areas concerned with memory, and to study how age influences cognitive function and spatial learning. The task is also used as a tool to study drug-abuse, neural systems, neurotransmitters, and brain development. Overview The basic procedure for the Morris water navigation task is that the rat is placed in a large circular pool and is required to find a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
T-maze
In behavioral science, a T-maze (or the variant Y-maze) is a simple forked passage used in animal cognition experiments.Olton, D.S. (1979). Mazes, maps, and memory. ''American Psychologist'', 34, 583–596). It is shaped like the letter T (or Y), providing the subject, typically a rodent, with a straightforward choice. T-mazes are used to study how the rodents function with memory and spatial learning through applying various stimuli. Starting in the early 20th century, rodents were used in experiments such as the T-maze. These concepts of T-mazes are used to assess rodent behavior. The different tasks, such as left-right discrimination and forced alternation, are mainly used with rodents to test reference and working memory. Apparatus The T-maze is one of a group of various mazes of differing sizes and many shapes. It is one of the most simple, consisting of just two turns – right or left. The maze is only able to be altered by blocking one of the two paths. The basis b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elevated Plus Maze
The elevated plus maze (EPM) is a test measuring anxiety in laboratory animals that usually uses rodents as a screening test for putative anxiolytic or anxiogenic compounds and as a general research tool in neurobiological anxiety research such as PTSD and TBI. The model is based on the test animal's aversion to open spaces and tendency to be thigmotaxic. In the EPM, this anxiety is expressed by the animal spending more time in the enclosed arms. Method The test uses an elevated, plus-shaped (+) apparatus with two open and two enclosed arms. The behavioral model is based on the general aversion of rodents to open spaces. This aversion leads to thigmotaxis: a preference for remaining in enclosed spaces or close to the edges of a bounded space. In the EPM, this translates into the animals limiting their movement to the enclosed arms. Anxiety reduction is indicated in the plus-maze by an increase in the proportion of time spent in the open arms (time in open arms/total time i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barnes Maze
The Barnes maze is a tool used in psychological laboratory experiments to measure spatial learning and memory. The test was first developed by Dr. Carol Barnes in 1979. The test subjects are usually rodents such as mice or lab rats, which either serve as a control or may have some genetic variable or deficiency present in them which will cause them to react to the maze differently. The basic function of Barnes maze is to measure the ability of a mouse to learn and remember the location of a target zone using a configuration of distal visual cues located around the testing area. This noninvasive task is useful for evaluating novel chemical entities for their effects on cognition as well as identifying cognitive deficits in transgenic strains of rodents that model for disease such as Alzheimer's disease. It is also used by neuroscientists to determine whether there is a causative effect after mild traumatic brain injury on learning deficits (acquisition trials) and spatial memory rete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oasis Maze
The oasis maze is a spatial memory task used in psychology and neuroscience research and is the dry version of the Morris water navigation task. It is a land-based spatial memory task in which a thirsty rat uses distal spatial cues to search an open field for a specific location (Oasis) containing water. The maze consists of an enclosed space (usually the same shape and dimensions of the space used in the Morris water maze) in which a small amount of water is hidden. A thirsty rat is then placed in the maze and learns where the water is by trial and error. The maze tests memory by allowing the researcher to record the rat's performance on this task after it is learned and various time intervals or other events supposedly disruptive to memory have occurred. Apparatus The Oasis maze is a circular, acrylic board (1.8 m in diameter) that is painted flat white and raised 76 cm from the floor by a table with a lazy Susan attached, allowing the board to be freely rotated about i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thigmotaxis
A taxis (; ) is the movement of an organism in response to a stimulus such as light or the presence of food. Taxes are innate behavioural responses. A taxis differs from a tropism (turning response, often growth towards or away from a stimulus) in that in the case of taxis, the organism has motility and demonstrates guided movement towards or away from the stimulus source. It is sometimes distinguished from a kinesis, a non-directional change in activity in response to a stimulus. Classification Taxes are classified based on the type of stimulus, and on whether the organism's response is to move towards or away from the stimulus. If the organism moves towards the stimulus the taxis are positive, while if it moves away the taxis are negative. For example, flagellate protozoans of the genus ''Euglena'' move towards a light source. This reaction or behavior is called ''positive phototaxis'' since phototaxis refers to a response to light and the organism is moving towards the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physiology & Behavior
''Physiology & Behavior'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier. It covers the fields of behavioral neuroendocrinology, psychoneuroimmunology, learning and memory, ingestion, social behavior, and studies related to the mechanisms of psychopathology. It was established in 1966 with Matthew J. Wayner as its founding editor-in-chief. The current editor-in-chief is Thomas Lutz (University of Zurich). Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts, Current Contents/Life Sciences, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Science Citation Index, Scopus, and PubMed. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal has a 2020 impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ... of 3.244. References External links * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Map
A cognitive map is a type of mental representation which serves an individual to acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment. The concept was introduced by Edward Tolman in 1948. He tried to explain the behavior of rats that appeared to learn the spatial layout of a maze, and subsequently the concept was applied to other animals, including humans. The term was later generalized by some researchers, especially in the field of operations research, to refer to a kind of semantic network representing an individual's personal knowledge or schemas. Overview Cognitive maps have been studied in various fields, such as psychology, education, archaeology, planning, geography, cartography, architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, management and history. Because of the broad use and study of cognitive maps, it has become a colloquialism for just about any ment ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radial Arm Maze
The radial arm maze was designed by Olton and Samuelson in 1976 to measure spatial learning and memory in rats. The original apparatus consists of eight equidistantly spaced arms, each about 4 feet long, and all radiating from a small circular central platform (later versions have used as few as three and as many as 48 arms). At the end of each arm there is a food site, the contents of which are not visible from the central platform. Two types of memory that are assessed during the performance in this task are reference memory and working memory. Reference memory is assessed when the rats only visit the arms of the maze which contains the reward. The failure to do so will result in reference memory error. Working memory is assessed when the rats enter each arm a single time. Re-entry into the arms would result in a working memory error. The design ensures that, after checking for food at the end of each arm, the rat is always forced to return to the central platform before making ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latency (engineering)
Latency, from a general point of view, is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed. Lag, as it is known in gaming circles, refers to the latency between the input to a simulation and the visual or auditory response, often occurring because of network delay in online games. Latency is physically a consequence of the limited velocity at which any physical interaction can propagate. The magnitude of this velocity is always less than or equal to the speed of light. Therefore, every physical system with any physical separation (distance) between cause and effect will experience some sort of latency, regardless of the nature of the stimulation at which it has been exposed to. The precise definition of latency depends on the system being observed or the nature of the simulation. In communications, the lower limit of latency is determined by the medium being used to transfer information. In reliable two-way communication syst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Maze (neuroscience)
A water maze is a device used to test an animal's memory in which the alleys are filled with water, providing a motivation to escape. Many different mazes exist, such as T- and Y-mazes, Cincinnati water mazes, and radial arm mazes. Water mazes have been used to test discrimination learning and spatial learning abilities. The Morris water navigation task is often called a "water maze task", but this is erroneous as it is not, properly speaking, a maze. The development of these mazes has aided research into, for example, hippocampal synaptic plasticity, NMDA receptor function, and looking into neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me .... References Behavioral neuroscience {{Neuroscience-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Learning And Motivation
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of learning in certain plants. Some learning is immediate, induced by a single event (e.g. being burned by a hot stove), but much skill and knowledge accumulate from repeated experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime, and it is hard to distinguish learned material that seems to be "lost" from that which cannot be retrieved. Human learning starts at birth (it might even start before in terms of an embryo's need for both interaction with, and freedom within its environment within the womb.) and continues until death as a consequence of ongoing interactions between people and their environment. The nature and processes involved in learning are studied in many established fields (including educational psychology, neuropsychology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
