Experimenters often start by measuring escape latency with a hand held stop watch, but the measures and analyses provided by a good video tracking and analysis system allow the experimenter to gain much more from a trial, improving the acceptance level of papers and leading to findings that would otherwise be missed.

A suitable tracking system will identify and quantify specific behaviors, enabling the experimenter to distinguish between spatial learning and other strategies that will themselves decrease escape latency, such as circling the pool at a certain distance from the pool side, which does not indicate learning of the actual spatial position of the platform.

Likewise in probe tests a suitable automated system gives consistent, quantified data regarding the degree of spatial learning that has taken place, for example heading angle (the angle of the initial path taken relative to the ideal path to the learned platform location), latency to the learned position, number of passes through the learned position,  percentage time at or close to the learned position, and analysis of time slices of trials, allowing the experimenter to distinguish between animals that go straight to the learned location but spend a limited time there on finding that the platform is no longer there, and those that simply don’t spend much time there.

Find out more about tracking and analysis software for Morris water maze and other tasks.