Though a thirsty mouse does not know there is water located inside, it will explore the maze methodically. In about half of these experiments, the mouse was thirsty and could be assumed to be motivated by a drive to find water. We allow the mouse to make the kinds of decisions that mice make rather than force them to accept some abstract task that really has no relevance." We just come back seven hours later and analyze videos of what the mouse did during that time. "We don't exert any influence on the animal. "In this study, we expose a mouse to a complex labyrinth environment, turn on a camera, and just walk out of the room," says Meister. A video camera tracked the mouse's movements and quantified the exploratory behavior. The researchers gave an individual mouse access to the maze from its home cage and allowed it to explore as it desired for one night. Within the maze is a water port that dispenses a small drop of water. Led by graduate students Matthew Rosenberg and Tony Zhang, the team developed a complex maze for the mice to explore, featuring 63 decision junctions and 64 possible endpoints. "Over the last few years, we've been trying to develop experimental approaches that are more respectful of the complexity of natural animal behavior, things that are more similar to what animals do in the real world," says Meister. The task, though it seems simple for humans, is not a very natural undertaking for a mouse. Even then, the mouse may only get it correct 80 percent of the time.
#Fast forward any maze how to
A lab mouse, however, might need around 10,000 trials to correctly learn how to do a task such as this. Given that there are only two decisions to make-turn left or right-it would probably take you no time at all to learn this simple task. When a light comes on to your left, you must turn the wheel to the left when a light comes on to your right, you must turn the wheel to the right. Imagine a steering wheel is set in front of you. A paper describing the study appeared online in the journal eLife on July 21, 2021. Puckett Professor of Electrical Engineering. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences, and Pietro Perona, Allen E. The research is a collaboration between the laboratories of Markus Meister (PhD '87), Anne P. Interestingly, Caltech graduate students performed similarly to mice in navigating a simulated version of the same maze. The study has implications for how we think about the brain and the body's role in intelligence. The mice rapidly learned how to navigate this unfamiliar environment about 1,000 times faster than mice generally learn simple yet unnatural tasks. However, many of the tasks used to study learning in mice are not "natural"-they are not behaviors that a mouse might do in the course of its life.Ĭaltech researchers have now conducted a study in which they measured how mice navigate a complicated labyrinth, suggesting a new framework with which to study complex animal behaviors and learning. Researchers often use animal models, such as mice, to study the neural processes underlying these behaviors. Your commute to work may seem like a mundane thing, but it is a great example of the complicated tasks our brains must carry out on a daily basis: navigation, memory, decision-making, sensory processing, and so on.
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