Abstract
SummaryMultiple mazes are routinely used to test the performance of animals because each has disadvantages inherent to its shape. However, the maze shape cannot be flexibly and rapidly reproduced in a repeatable and scalable way in a single environment. Here, to overcome the lack of flexibility, scalability, reproducibility, and repeatability, we develop a reconfigurable maze system that consists of interlocking runways and an array of accompanying parts. It allows experimenters to rapidly and flexibly configure a variety of maze structures along the grid pattern in a repeatable and scalable manner. Spatial navigational behavior and hippocampal place coding were not impaired by the interlocking mechanism. As a proof-of-principle demonstration, we demonstrate that the maze morphing induces location remapping of the spatial receptive field. The reconfigurable maze thus provides flexibility, scalability, repeatability, and reproducibility, therefore facilitating consistent investigation into the neuronal substrates for learning and memory and allowing screening for behavioral phenotypes.
Highlights
To overcome the lack of flexibility, scalability, reproducibility, and repeatability, we develop a reconfigurable maze system that consists of interlocking runways and an array of accompanying parts
Spatial navigational behavior and hippocampal place coding were not impaired by the interlocking mechanism
Such flexible maze design allows experimenters to rapidly select the tasks best matched to the needs of a particular experiment during preliminary studies. In accordance with this flexible design principle, we developed a small version of the reconfigurable maze system for mice (Figure 1I, Table S2)
Summary
Several shapes of mazes such as the T-maze (Small, 1901; Dudchenko, 2001), plus maze (Olton and Feustle, 1981), radial arm maze (Olton and Samuelson, 1976; Olton et al, 1978), and figure-8 maze (Wood et al, 2000) have been designed as behavioral tests to assess the performance of working (Dudchenko, 2004), reference (Olton and Paras, 1979; Xu et al, 2019) and episodic-like memory (Babb and Crystal, 2005), and spatial navigation (O’Keefe and Nadel, 1978), as well as for studying anxiety (Walf and Frye, 2007). As individual tests of learning and memory, all have pros and cons (Andersen et al, 2009). To compensate for the disadvantages, evidence from a battery of maze tests is usually accumulated to understand specific learning and memory (Tecott and Nestler, 2004). Each test is often conducted in a different real or virtual experimental room because conventional mazes cannot be rebuilt in a systematically arranged manner. The details of the maze structure, including shape, coordination, and dimensions, are crucial aspects of the test results, whereas the structures themselves cannot be precisely reproduced in different laboratories in a repeatable way. Conventional maze tests lack reproducibility and repeatability
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