Abstract
The Morris Water Maze Behavioural Test is a universal method for testing cognitive functions in experimental rodents, and it is especially effective in detecting deviations in memory functions and learning, which makes it indispensable in the study of neurodegenerative diseases, effect of therapeutic drugs, rodent stroke and aging models etc. However, despite the wide range of possible applications, data analysis makes the use of this test difficult. Currently, automated tracking and analysis programs of rodent moving are becoming to be popular. Thus, our goal was to develop and create an available quality product, which will allow the scientist to carry out research as efficiently as possible doing various options of the “Morris water maze” using latest modern parameters. In this article, we analyze different types of the Morris water maze methodology and the current scientific parameters of this test to understand the necessary and optimal capabilities of the future program, then to overcome the limitations of the systems currently available we have combined detection and tracking techniques into one standalone tool. The result of the work is a software product that allows to quickly and accurately detect the trajectory of animal moving in the water, and also provides parameters for evaluating the cognitive functions of memory and learning.
Highlights
The Morris Water Maze has become the gold standard for the study of spatial memory and learning processes, is a must-have test for phenotyping mutant and transgenic mice [1], and is often used as a general analysis of cognitive function [2], for example, to test the effects of various disorders of the nervous system, such as animal models of stroke [3], aging [4], neurodegenerative diseases [5,6,7,8,9] or the potential impact of new therapeutic agents [10]
In this article we present a self-contained tool for Morris Water Maze test automatization
To automate MWM testing, we considered various methods that were combined into one tool, in contrast to existing commercial and non-commercial tools, open and standalone, and created a unique program for tracing rodents and processing the obtained data
Summary
The Morris Water Maze has become the gold standard for the study of spatial memory and learning processes, is a must-have test for phenotyping mutant and transgenic mice [1], and is often used as a general analysis of cognitive function [2], for example, to test the effects of various disorders of the nervous system, such as animal models of stroke [3], aging [4], neurodegenerative diseases [5,6,7,8,9] or the potential impact of new therapeutic agents [10]. The basic protocol, which aims to diagnose the spatial reference memory, consists of a daily series of tests in which an experimental rodent swims in opaque water looking for a hidden platform [11,12,13] In this case, the simplest and most revealing parameter is the platform search latency time. The second revealing parameter is the percentage of time the rodent spent in one of the four imaginary quadrants the platform is in [14] In this modification of the protocol, the last single test is an obligatory step, when the platform is completely removed from the pool, and the rodent swims for a certain amount of time in opaque water, where there is no platform. Recursive equations are used to constantly update the parameters and and to simultaneously select the appropriate number of components for each pixel [35], [36]
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