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Morris Water Maze

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Using the Morris Water Maze to Assess
Spatial Learning and Memory in Weanling Mice
Rebekah Nhim
Cal State University, Long Beach

Summary Section
Introduction and hypothesis
The Morris water maze is a well-known test for studying spatial learning and memory.
Weanling mice that were maze-trained demonstrated a significant amount of improvements in their spatial learning over the training period, the outcome of the probe trial showed the progress of spatial memory. The use of the Morris water maze, created strong findings that can be found to evaluate spatial learning and memory in weanling mice. This research is important because it demonstrates the ability to study complex behaviors with face validity to the clinical phenotypes …show more content…
And lastly, 3) the Morris water maze training raises transcript levels of genes that corresponds with synaptic plasticity. The authors also found that the training of the mice significantly caused a decrease in escape latency and there was also an increase that was significant in both the amount of time the mice swam and the length of the path that was spent in the target quadrant. The performances in the Morris water maze were strongly impacted by sensorimotor functions, and this can be evaluated by using a visual cue test. From this experiment, authors also found that the hippocampus, cortex and cerebellum are three brain regions that are the primary neuroanatomical substrates for learning in the Morris task (Barnhart, 2015; Yang, 2015; Lein, …show more content…
The article also strongly demonstrated that spatial and learning memory is very crucial in our life, and even for animals. Many of the data that were included, like the figures and tables shown, supported the authors conclusions. Throughout the study, the authors did also support their hypothesis, which was to decide whether the Morris water maze could be able to be suitable to evaluate spatial learning and memory in weanling mice. The importance and relevance of the research project was to demonstrate the potential to study intricate behaviors to the genetic and environmental influences corresponding with neurodevelopmental impairment, which including learning and memory. Although this was a great study that has been done, there are always room for many new changes and improvements. Future directions for a next experiment could be to specifically separate mice by sex and see if there if a significant

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