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The Watermaze

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The Maze Book

Part of the book series: Neuromethods ((NM,volume 94))

Abstract

This chapter chronicles the personal account of the development and refinement of the spatial navigation task, now known as the watermaze. The watermaze began at the Gatty Marine Laboratory at St Andrews, once famous for its work on the neurobiology of various marine animals, in the laboratory of Richard Morris. In the late 1970s, walking past tanks of various sea creatures every day to his new laboratory, Morris pondered whether a “maze” in which rats had to swim could be a useful way to examine spatial memory and to investigate the functional significance of recently discovered hippocampal place cells. And, low and behold, the watermaze was born. In this chapter, Morris highlights and discusses the step-by-step laboratory setup, apparatus, different training protocols, critical control procedures, and optimal data analysis procedures for the watermaze. His key message is that the watermaze is not just one task, but a family of procedures suited to diverse scientific questions.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter describes the apparatus and wide range of protocols and data-analysis options for the watermaze. I am grateful to the many assistants, graduate students, postdocs, and visitors to my laboratory whose comments have helped to develop the watermaze to its present level of sophistication, and to many other groups elsewhere who have introduced new ideas and made valuable discoveries using this technique. I am indebted to the UK Medical Research Council who supported my research through Programme Grants over 25 years. This manuscript was supported by an Advanced Investigator Grant (26880) from the European Research Council (ERC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Neuroscience, Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems, The University of Edinburgh, 1 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, UK

    Richard G. M. Morris

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  1. Richard G. M. Morris
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Correspondence to Richard G. M. Morris .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Heather A. Bimonte-Nelson

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Morris, R.G.M. (2015). The Watermaze. In: Bimonte-Nelson, H. (eds) The Maze Book. Neuromethods, vol 94. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2159-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2159-1_3

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-2158-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2159-1

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