Klapdor K, van der staay F J
Institute for Neurobiology, Troponwerke GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany.
Physiol Behav. 1996 Nov;60(5):1247-54. doi: 10.1016/s0031-9384(96)00224-7.
The Morris water-escape task is an extensively used experimental paradigm to assess the spatial discrimination performance and effects of brain lesions and drugs on this performance. In the first experiment, we compared the acquisition of this task by different strains (CFW1, BALB, NMRI, and C57BL) of mice and their performance in a probe trial. In a second experiment, C57BL mice were tested in Morris mazes where black and white tanks were combined with white or black platforms to investigate if and how the contrast between the tank and the platform affects the performance of the mice. In addition, four brightness conditions were compared to investigate whether or not the degree of brightness of the tank itself affects the learning performance. The results of these experiments indicated that 1. mice could readily learn the Morris task, 2. one of the contrast conditions affected the swimming speed, 3. the maze brightness per se did not affect water escape performance at all, and that 4. the swimming speed can strongly bias the outcome of Morris water-escape experiments in mice.
莫里斯水迷宫逃避任务是一种广泛应用的实验范式，用于评估空间辨别能力以及脑损伤和药物对该能力的影响。在第一个实验中，我们比较了不同品系（CFW1、BALB、NMRI和C57BL）小鼠对该任务的习得情况及其在探索试验中的表现。在第二个实验中，对C57BL小鼠在莫里斯迷宫中进行测试，迷宫中的黑色和白色水池与白色或黑色平台相结合，以研究水池与平台之间的对比度是否以及如何影响小鼠的表现。此外，还比较了四种亮度条件，以研究水池本身的亮度程度是否会影响学习表现。这些实验的结果表明：1. 小鼠能够轻松学会莫里斯任务；2. 其中一种对比度条件影响了游泳速度；3. 迷宫亮度本身根本不影响水迷宫逃避表现；4. 游泳速度会严重影响小鼠莫里斯水迷宫逃避实验的结果。
