Talk:Morris water navigation task

Merge

A message from Richard Baker at HVS Image UK on Dec 24, 2005. First let's mention that "Morris water maze" can also be called "Morris watermaze", "water maze", "watermaze". Wikipedia has picked up on that and merged an article by an academic and an article by myself, to make one blanket article. The join shows a bit, but the article is accurate and informative. The major problem is that Wikipedia's computer has picked up on apparent keywords, and indexed them mostly to completely irrelevant places, or even non-existent locations. This dear Wiki-editors is something to think about. Meanwhile, it's a good read....

I don't understand the "major problem" you mention. First, by "indexing" I'm assuming you mean linking, which converts a word into a clickable link to another Wikipedia article. This is done by human editors (i.e. not a computer) who add double-brackets around a word or words, e.g. [[Action potential]] gives Action potential, which is a link that can be clicked.

Second, I don't see how the links in question are to "completely irrelevant places". There are links to spatial memory, the hippocampus, latency, etc., all of which seem relevant to me. Granted, there are links colored in red to nonexistent articles. But that's not a problem at all -- one of the joys of Wikipedia is that anyone can click on one of those red links and author the article. --David Iberri (talk) 19:27, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the initial poster. It doesn't strike you that a link to "rat" isn't really appropriate to this article? Or a link to "opaque"? Or how about the link to "millimeters"? At this point, why not just link every word in the article? Hell, there's a link to "1994"! Not for long.

Since it's inception over 20 years ago the "Morris maze" (which is not a maze and should more appropriately be called the Morris "water navigation task") has gained enormous popularity. People have therefore come to just call it "the watermaze". It is inappropriate, however, that "water maze" redirects to this article. Many watermazes exist, real mazes. Denenberg developed an aquatic version of the [radial maze] in the early 90s, van Abeelen used an aquatic T maze in the late 60s or early 70s, etc. I myself used a "Lichter maze" in a 1988 publication in Behavior Genetics (18:153-165). Somebody should undo this redirect (I don't know how to do that). Crusio 11:06, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup tag removed

The article's not confusing, doesn't having any glaring spelling or grammatical errors, and conforms to how WP articles are usually formatted. Those are generally the reasons for requesting cleanup, so I removed the tag. --David Iberri (talk) 19:15, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

The article appears to be vandalized, but I don't know the original content to fix it.

"This ability is attributed to a spatial map in a brain area called the penis.

Once a rat is sacrificed, Satan himself is summoned forth with great venegance and destroys the water maze and consumes the other rats. The scientists heads are then impaled upon pikes to ward off other scientists."

Seems that this is unlikely. Gary Seven 16:21, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Fishy

In the section Comparison to conventional mazes, the sentence "It has been suggested that mice may not actually aim to find the platform, but fool the technician into rescuing them." This seems to be giving an awful lot of credit to mice. Can they really deliberately try to fool to a person? I know that some animals play dead etc. to fool other entities, but to fool a person into rescuing them seems a whole nother cognitive level. Sounds fishy to me. Herostratus 03:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

International Units

The article says the pool is filled without one foot of water, shouldn't this be converted to international units ? XApple 06:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Water Depth

In the lab where I performed the Morris Water Maze, we would fill the pool up with only about 10 [cm] of water; but add a substance similar to milk in the water to render it opaque and hide the platform better. XApple 06:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Number of trials

How many trials does a perfectly standard wild type rat need to head straight for the platform in an unchanging pool ? XApple 06:43, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Peer Review for BI481

What a peculiar experiment! I think your page gives a great overview of the experiment and you are very clear and concise. I think the actual page setup could use some improvements. First, I think the pictures (both very excellent pictures for your page) seem awkwardly placed on the page. I think the maze picture should be bigger so I can more clearly see the experiment design without having to click the actual picture (I should only have to do that for a more in depth look). I think the mouse picture should be separate from the experimental design picture (they seem to be in the same grey box). I also think these pictures should be placed to the right of the text like many other Wikipedia pages do.

Both the “Comparison to conventional mazes” and “Water maze analysis” sections have no reference numbers and so I am wondering where that information came from. The later section also includes broken links that should be removed or fixed. I also think you could add many more hyperlinks throughout the page just to make it look more official and to connect the page into the Wikipedia web.

I believe under the guidelines of our class in the BI481 page says you need at least 10 paragraphs of writing in the page and I am not sure if you have that much writing. The two ways you could add more text – add more text to the sections you have or create new sections. I think a section you could create is on the experimental significance of these tests (or tests done specifically by Richard G. Morris who is mentioned in the introductory paragraph). Maybe you couldn’t find a lot of information (which is okay) but I think your page could be stronger if you can find direct (and significant if there are any) contributions to the medical field.

Overall – I think the page successfully explains the Morris water navigation task and I have a very good grasp of what it is but more information on the significance of this task can be provided to make the page as a whole stronger. Plavadera (talk) 23:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review

Comment 1

Great stub, guys. I think you did an especially good job linking to other Wikipedia pages, and integrating this topic into what is already there. I did have a few suggestions regarding additional citations and some basic formatting stuff. In the first section, Overview, I think it would be helpful to include citations in the first paragraph. Even though it is mainly background information, it is not information common to everyone, and thus should probably be cited. There is also one sentence that I found especially unclear: Escape from the water reinforces a desire to quickly find the platform. Although I think I know what you are trying to say, maybe reword for clarity. Additionally, I wouldn't include a paragraph unless it has three or more sentences. Finally, for the Overview section, the first sentence of the third paragraph is repetitive and could probably be left out.

The next section is really interesting, and I think it is important that you've included what the maze was originally intended for. I would just try to stay away from vague statements, such as Over the years, many different versions of this test have been performed with a large amount of variables, and just jump right into the more detailed information. Also, in your section comparing the Morris water task to other mazes, I would link to the other kinds of mazes, so that readers have an understanding of what they are comparing it to. Finally for this section, I would include more citations in the final two paragraphs.

Your section on "Effects of Variables on Experiment" is really intriguing- especially the finding that cocaine can impair spatial memory for up to three months! One thing I might change is the title of the section; the current title suggests that variables are effecting the maze, when really the maze is being used to test a wide range of independent variables. I would be careful using the term variable to describe a research method.

Finally, for the last few sections of the stub, I would suggest making it clear in the section titles that you are discussing the Morris Water Maze. For example, instead of Discoveries in Neuroscience, maybe something like, MWM's contribution to discoveries in neuroscience, (although maybe something less wordy). Overall though I think this section is the most important when considering the MWM, as it discusses the importance of the task in terms of practical applications and findings. I think this is an awesome article, and help people to gain a better understanding of not only what we know about the brain, but also how we came to know it. Awesome work. Abbychick (talk) 20:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to comment 1

Thank you so much for your comments. I found them to be really helpful. In the History of the Maze section I fixed some of the awkward wording you alluded and added more citations. I did not change the title of Discoveries in Neuroscience because I think the fact that the section is in the Morris Water Navigation Task page is enough that readers should know each section is referring to the maze. Thanks again! Maddierawding

Thanks so much for those edits! I got rid of the first paragraph of the overview, because it had been on the page from the previous editor, and since there were no citations as you said, I felt it was better left out. All the points made in it were made later with citations. I also got rid of the "Effects of Variables on Experiment" title because it was a misleading title, and we figured it went well with the Discoveries in Neuroscience. Hasstheboss (talk) 01:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment 2

Your introduction does a great job of providing a general overview of what the Morris water navigation task is used for and its importance in studying relevant issues such as “drug-abuse, neural systems, neurotransmitters, and brain development.” Reading the article, I am intrigued and want to learn more, seeing that this task provides insight into so many areas of study! In the introduction paragraph, “spatial working” should be changed to “spatial working memory.” You could also link to the “Spatial memory” and “Working memory” Wikipedia pages here.

Perhaps you could be more specific when you say “visual cues, such as colored shapes, are placed around the pool in plain sight of the animal” in the Overview section—are these visual cues on the sidewall of the pool or in the surrounding environment? Minor edit—in “1.2 to 1.8 meter,” the word “meter” should be changed to “meters.” I would eliminate the following sentence as it is redundant: “The basic procedure for the Morris Water Maze is the rat is placed in the water maze, a large circular pool, and is ultimately supposed to find the invisible platform that will allow it to escape the water.” Then you can proceed to discuss how altering several dependent variables and examining task performance affects spatial memory and the three different escape strategies.

In the Original Experiment section, perhaps you could be more specific about how visual cues were eliminated—was the room dark?

You should link to the “Radial arm maze” Wikipedia page in the first sentence of the History of Maze section. Good job incorporating Randykitty’s comment about mice vs. rats into this section. “Large amount of variables” should be changed to large number of variables. “The results dramatically” should be changed to “the results differ dramatically,” if that is what you are trying to say. In the same sentence just mentioned, the word “test” should be changed to "tests". “Varying the diameter of the pool does not have a significant impact on the results of the impact” does not make sense—perhaps replace the second “impact” with the word "test" instead. There is also a lot of repetition in the History of Maze section of information that is already mentioned in the Overview section such as different independent variables of the subjects and different dependent variables that are measured during the task. I would suggest eliminating this information from one of the two sections so that you are not repeating yourself.

In the Comparison to conventional mazes section, when you say “other mazes only measure one task,” I think you mean to say that other mazes only measure one of these three measures. My favorite part of this section is when you say, “Another reason this task became popular is that rats and mice are natural swimmers so in order to perform the task they do not need to be motivated by food deprivation or electrical shock.” How interesting!! You also do a fantastic job of being specific about what the T-maze lacks in comparison to the Morris water maze. Great job with that. I would suggest being more specific about how the mobility of the platform relates to the fact that the “experiment is still effective with multiple doses of different drugs on the test animals.”

In the Environmental Effects section, “rat socially raised” should be changed to “socially raised rat.” When you say that the “conclusion taken from this experiment was that the rats environment had the ability to change their neurotransmissions in the cholinergic system”, perhaps you should explain why this conclusion was drawn because you have not yet explained the functioning of neurotransmitters or the cholinergic system relative to this task.

In the Spatial learning section, you should probably define allocentric and egocentric space because your argument is confusing without knowing what these terms mean. You should also link to the Wikipedia page on Huntington's disease when you mention it. Perhaps you should mention the role of Acetylcholine and glutamate in the basal forebrain otherwise you have not really explained how the conclusion about these neurotransmitters would have been drawn based on alterations of the basal forebrain. You should also link to Wikipedia pages on Acetylcholine and Glutamate so that you do not have to go into too much depth about them, and interested readers can do more research.

In the section called Transgenic Mice, mention the specific changes resulting from Alzheimer’s that are also seen in transgenic mice. Also, link to the Alzheimer’s Wikipedia page here.

The section at the end called Water maze analysis includes information already mentioned in your article at the end of the History of Maze section. I would move unmentioned information from the Water maze analysis up to the History of Maze section because it does not belong at the end of your article. Also, internal links to the Gallagher measure and Wishaw corridor test are not working.

Great job overall on this page. You have done a lot of important research and go into a lot of detail. Just consider my edits throughout. Also, I would consider moving the Effects of Variables Upon Experiment to the end of the article. It would be more informative to read that section after having read more about the structures involved in spatial learning that you include in the Discoveries in Neuroscience section. You included helpful and relevant images throughout your article! Well done. I learned a lot from reading your article. KerzNeuroscience (talk) 12:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to Comment 2

I appreciated how thorough your comments were. It made it really easy to go back to the grammar mistakes and fix them. I tried to clarify in the comparison to other mazes what I meant by the mobile platform allowing multiple experiments on the mice. My partner and I decided to remove the Water Maze analysis altogether because we did not write it and it did not have any references. We also agreed that your suggestions of reorganizing the page would help the flow. Maddierawding —Preceding undated comment added 16:03, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

• Hi guys, removing content "because we did not write it" is about the worst possible reason to delete info (see WP:OWN). If there are no references, that could be a reason, but in this case, I know there are references and all you need do is find and add them. How to analyze data from this task certainly is an important subject and is something that should b e addressed here. Another topic that is underdeveloped are the different tasks that can be designed using this setup (using an Atlantis platform, varying the position of the platform, and whatnot. Concerning pool designs, there is work by Franz-Josef van der Staay and others on using clear water instead of opaque water for example. However, please make sure that you use primary sources only sparingly, secondary sources are preferred! --Randykitty (talk) 18:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment 3

First of all, great job on this stub. The two previous comments pretty much sum up what I have to say about the article, but I have a few more suggestions. I agree with the first commenter that there should be some citations in the first paragraph of the "Overview" section. For someone that knows next to nothing about this, outside of what we briefly discussed in class, I would like to know where this information comes from. Maybe one or two references at the most would suffice. In the section "criticisms" I would point to a specific example of a criticism of the MWM and then point to a couple of alternatives that would be better suited for a particular experiment.

The section "pharmacological manipulation" is a great outline of what the MWM tests when it comes to drug abuse. However, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who is wondering about specific tests about specific drugs. Therefore, I would suggest throwing in a short list of tests that have been done with rats on various drugs (just the prevalent ones like alcohol, marijuana, etc.). It doesn't have to be long, maybe just one or two sentences summarizing the experiment and its findings. A good place to start would be this article on fetal alcohol syndrome: http://search.proquest.com/psycinfo/docview/618465912/141F820094E5F0431ED/1?accountid=12447. I just pulled it out of PsycInfo -- you can probably do a better job of locating sources than I can.

I actually disagree with the first commenter as I think that the heading "Discoveries in Neuroscience" is appropriate for the section as you are discussing what neuroscientists have found using the MWM. However, I would suggest that you put in some basic timeline so we can get a sense of when these discoveries were made. This can be using phrases as simple as "studies dating as far back as year X have shown that X, Y, and Z happened" and "recent research has confirmed X, Y, and Z in this new context" (for example). As someone who is new to the topic I would like to know what information is relatively new and what information is not so new. Also, in the "transgenic mice" section you should probably expound on what you have since it's leaving the reader hanging a bit. I'd like to know what these behavioral changes are, and I'm a bit confused on where it fits in the grand scheme of the MWM.

Finally, it took me a while to figure out how the title "Water maze analysis" fit into the section, and I'm still not entirely clear on what you're trying to accomplish in that section. It could be me, but if there is any way to give it a bit more clarity that would be extremely helpful. A couple of references wouldn't hurt either.

Once again, you guys did an excellent job and should be very proud of your work. This page is interesting and enlightening. --Toh.cameron (talk) 04:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)C.Toh

Response to comment 3

Thanks so much for your comment. I found it very helpful! My partner and I agreed with you about the first overview section so we removed it. I decided not to add the timeline because since the 80s over 2000 experiments with the MWM have been done and there are not distinct time periods for the types measured. I moved the transgenic section because it is not necessary to have a whole section on it. It is just an example of a different use for the maze. Also, we deleted the water maze analysis section because we did not write it and agreed that it lacked citations and relevancy. Maddierawding MaddierawdingMaddierawding (talk) 00:04, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment 4

To start things of I think you guys did a great job in presenting the topic in a well-written introduction. For someone, like me, with little to no knowledge about the topic you have already given a great overview with just the few first sentences. You clearly stated the purpose of the water maze as well as some few key topics you will touch upon later as we continue going through the page.

In the third paragraph under the heading “Overview”, the first sentence there that starts with “The basic procedure for the Morris Water Maze…” It feels repetitive to what you already had stated in your earlier description in the overview, maybe instead of having it as a separate paragraph you could merge it with the first paragraph and just add ”To summaries…” or ”To conclude…” just so you don’t sound repetitive. When talking about the Origin of the maze, I get the sense that you could merge that subheading in with the History of the maze and just state the original sizes there instead of devoting an entire subheading.

Drugs seem to be something that researches love to test out on rats and mice in the water maze, so I would at least like to have some overview of what drugs have what effect on the water maze. Also something that would be interesting to know is, beside from age, gender and environment, if any other imperative effects have a impact on how well the rats and mice preformed when different they where suffering or recovering from different diseases, for example Alzheimer’s, Stroke etc.

Beside from those few points I believe most of the other issues had already been touched upon. Overall I enjoyed reading it, it was easy to read and follow and I learned a lot about the topic, even made me go into some of the references to find out some additional information. Anyway, Good Job! Ahagman (talk) 01:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to comment 4

My partner made changes according to your comments. Thanks for you help! (talk) MaddierawdingMaddierawding (talk) 16:09, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all these comments! I put a line in the "Discoveries in Neuroscience" section about how the experiments can be used to explore a multitude of variables and their effect on mice and rats performance, but we explored two major factors: Drugs and Environment. Hasstheboss (talk) 01:57, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Hey guys, good article but just a few suggestions. What about including the role of the amygdala in spatial learning involved in the morris water maze tasks? I would suggest reading this article : http://www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/pdf/john.pdf maybe to get an idea for the amygdala's role in the morris water maze, and then you guys could maybe do more research on it with reputable sources. Also it feels necessary to include a section actually explaining the functions of the hippocampus in relation to spatial memory, and further more amygdala in response to stress environments and the water maze. Also just a quick sentence explaining NMDA receptor function, I know there's a page for it, but it has a context in this article and wouldn't be excess information. Anyways, great article nonetheless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArmenAbagyan (talk • contribs) 23:29, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

• Hi guys, let me but in here before you do lots of unnecessary work. Discussions about the function of brain areas doesn't belong here, that belongs in the articles on those brain areas. You have to realize that this article does not stand alone, but is part of an encyclopedia. That's why we have wikilinks, so you can link to those articles and don't need to repeat what was already said elsewhere. BTW, I'm a bit surprised by the "peer review" subjects here, because as far as I can see, there have not been any major edits to this article in over a year. --Randykitty (talk) 08:49, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Comment 5

Hey Everyone, Great job on the article. The page is clearly well-reserached and I think you do a good job of taking a complex topic and making it relatively easy to understand. Likewise, you do a good job linking to other wikipedia pages and your images add a lot to the page, making the information easier to digest . I have a few suggestions below:

First in terms of the order of the sections, I would maybe put history of the maze and original experiment before overview. I think it flows better and gives the reader a better idea of what exactly the maze is, before going into detail about the actual structure of the maze, water level etc. Also, maybe put the section of "Analysis of the Water Maze" and "Criticisms" together because there are covering very similar topics.

Next, in your introduction you say "It can be a very accurate way" of studying the brain just sounds like you are inserting a subjective opinion. Maybe change it to something like "many researchers have found it to be a very accurate way to study the brain" and then cite where you found that information. Next in the "Pharmacological Manipulation" section you say that rats "perform poorly" when treated with the NMDA receptor blocker AVP, but I would be even more specific here and say what exactly the rats do and why that is considered a poor performance, simply because if I were reading material on this topic for the first time I would not know what a "poor" performance entails. I have the same suggestion under "Environmental Factors", you say the rat raised in isolation performed "better" but specifically what did he do?

Lastly, In this section you go on to say "the conclusion taken from this experiment was that the rats environment had the ability to change their neurotransmissions in the cholinergic system." I would go back to the original source and add one more line as to why researches concluded that. As I read though it is hard to understand what exactly about the isolated rat performing better led researchers to conclude that. Besides these little things, I think you all did a great job!

Cabbadi (talk) 11:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to comment 5

Thanks for your helpful comments. My partner and I agree with your suggestion of reorganizing the page for flow so we moved some of the sections around. I also tried to improve the wording in the introduction that you pointed out as suggesting an opinion as opposed to fact. Thanks again! Maddierawding

Recent edits to this article

Hi, looks like this article is the subject of some class project, it could indeed use some expansion. A few remarks: 1/ be sure to read WP:MOS and apply it consistently (e.g., section title should be capitalized "Spatial learning", not "Spatial Learning"). 2/ This task is not really a maze, even though it is commonly called "Morris maze". "Navigation task" is more correct and precise, even though the alternative name has to be mentioned. 3/ The article is about the task, not about spatial learning and such. Therefore, including large sections on underlying mechanisms (such as the hippocampus and cognitive maps) is not appropriate here and those should go. 4/ There are many very different protocols in use and not all address the same kind of learning abilities (for example, tasks where the position of the platform changes every few trials, "Atlantis" versions, etc). These need to be covered. 5/ The article mostly talks mostly about rats, but, in fact, it is nowadays used much more frequently with mice. 6/ The task is not a purely spatial learning task. Animals can have deficits for many different reasons. See the works by Lipp and Wolfer, especially their article Wolfer DP, Stagliar-Bozicevic M, Errington ML, Lipp HP. Spatial memory and learning and in transgenic mice: fact or artifact? News Physiol Sci. 13:118-123, 1998.

Hope these remarks help. --Randykitty (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

• I have just dopne some edits correcting some stuff, removing some other stuff. Mice, for example, swim well, but they really hate being in the water. Rats like that, an important difference. Also, some people may have said that the Morris task can test more things than radial or T-mazes, but that is patently untrue. There exist many different test protocols, not only for the Morris test but also for various mazes that can test for many different types of memory. I am also going to remove the section "discoveries in neuroscience". I don't think there is a single "discovery" that can solely be attributed to any single test, not even one that has been used as much as this one. I must leave now, will expand later. --Randykitty (talk) 09:02, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• To expand on the "discoveries" section, this article is not the place to explain the functioning of the hippocampus, the use of genetically-modified mice in research, or the effects of environmental manipulations or drugs. It also suggests things that are incorrect: place cells were not discovered using the Morris test, for example. A short section stating that the task can be used in research whenever learning and memory needs to be assessed (with wikilinks to the respective articles and referring perhaps to a review article mentioning these things) should be sufficient. BTW, the images in this section are totally inappropriate: human brains in an article mainly about rodents? --Randykitty (talk) 13:07, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

New draft in response to comments

We are Hasstheboss and Maddierawding, two Middlebury College students working on this page for a neuroscience class. We will be working on this page until December 13th 2013. We just uploaded a final draft of how we think this page should look. We are very open to suggestions, please comment if you have any concerns. Thank you for your remarks Randykitty. We fixed the formatting and changed the sections to be more focused on Morris water maze, not spatial navigation. Let us know if you have any other suggestions. --Maddierawding

This article doesn't explain anything to the casual reader.

After reading this article, I still did not understand what the "Morris water navigation task" (aka "water maze") was, because it seems to lack basic information about the experiment itself. I had to watch this youtube video and within the first 30 seconds of narration, it is clearly explained that the experiment has two parts -- a training exercise, and a memory recall exercise. This explanation appears nowhere in the article, and leaves the reader to assume that only one maze exercise is performed by which the subject is scored. The article's introduction paragraph should explain this simply. "A two part experiment..." [1] - 75.173.140.75 (talk) 16:50, 26 November 2017 (UTC)