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Neuroscience JoVE (Open Access) Citable · DOI

Shallow Water (Paddling) Variants of Water Maze Tests in Mice

DOI: 10.3791/2608-v
What you'll learn
  • ✓ Understand shallow-water maze variants as alternatives to traditional Morris water maze
  • ✓ Set up and operate Oxford Paddling Pools for spatial learning assessment
  • ✓ Implement Paddling Y-maze for behavioral testing with reduced stress
  • ✓ Interpret performance metrics in paddling-based maze tests
Protocol

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.

Difficulty
intermediate
Total time
~45 min/mouse per training session (multiple sessions typically required for full protocol)
Model organism
Mouse (multiple strains)

Steps

1
Introduce Oxford Paddling Pools apparatus

Learn the design and configuration of shallow-water paddling pools used as alternatives to Morris water maze. These pools reduce stress compared to deep-water swimming tasks while maintaining learning capacity.

▶ 01:15
2
Operate Paddling Y-maze for behavioral testing

Set up and run the Paddling Y-maze configuration, a variant that uses shallow water to motivate escape behavior and assess spatial learning and decision-making in mice.

▶ 03:54
3
Measure and interpret performance metrics

Collect and analyze behavioral performance data from paddling pool trials, including latency, path length, and accuracy measures comparable to traditional water maze protocols.

▶ 06:06
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