History and Application
The Morris water maze is one of the most widely used methods for testing spatial learning and memory. Developed by Richard Morris at the University of St Andrews in the 1980s (Morris 1981, 1984), experiments using the Morris water maze have made vital contributions to theoretical and methodological advancements in behavioral neuroscience and animal cognition.
The logic behind the Morris water maze is simple: subjects are placed in a circular pool of opaque water and must swim in the pool until they find a small hidden platform submerged beneath the surface of the water that they can stand on. The Morris water maze was initially developed for use with rats, which are natural swimmers yet intrinsically motivated to find and stand on the hidden platform in order to get out of the water. In the classic version of the Morris water maze, the position of the hidden platform is constant in relation to the visual cues outside of the maze (e.g., posters located on the...
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References
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Kriengwatana, B.P. (2017). Morris Water Maze. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_886-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_886-1
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