Since its development in 1981 by Richard G. M. Morris, the Morris Water Maze (MWM) represents the gold standard for studying spatial learning in rodents. Especially in Alzheimer disease (AD) research, the MWM is a invaluable tool to determine various cognitive changes in living animals and therefore their brain functionality.

The spatial learning data in a MWM is retrieved by motion tracking mice in a circular pool filled with opaque water and a hidden escape platform. Further information on the experiment set-up and the experimental procedure can be found in chapter 2.2.1 of the accompanying thesis.

This work mainly focuses on the analysis of MWM data by using the strategy calling capabilities of the Rtrack package for R, which was developed by Rupert Overall. With those strategies called, strategy utilization data is computed and compared between the different mouse strains and housing conditions. The R code used in this computation can be found at the 'Analysis Code' section of this page.

5900

Tracks

analyzed

147

Animals

observed

35

Experiment Metrics

analyzed with Rtrack

3092

Lines of Code

used in data analysis

Rtrack

Rtrack is a R package developed by Rupert Overall to process raw spatial tracking data (such as from the Morris water maze task) and calculate behavioural strategies. The strategy analysis is performed in a parameter-free manner using pre-trained machine learning models. This makes analysis both fast and reproducible. In addition to that, the package includes several plotting functions, tools to aid advanced analysis, and export functions for results and raw data.

The export of raw data in a standardised format allows complete experiments to be archived and shared.

Watermaze.eu

Watermaze analysis

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