The maze environment is where you can see the behavioral part of the experiment. The view shows the "bird's eye view" of the behavioral apparatus. If the experiments use the same maze, but different behavioral conditions, the maze is replicated. For example, in Hirsh et al.'s (1978) experiments, in one trial food is located on the left arm of a T-maze and in the subsequent day, water is located on the right arm.
In this case,
for each food and water session (composed of three trials each), food is
placed on the left arm (the yellow rectangle in the maze below) and water
on the right arm (the cyan rectangle), respectively.
In the O'Keefe
(1983) experiment, food is first located on the left arm of the T-maze
and so the rat needs to learn to go consistenly to the left. After reaching
criteria, the reversal procedure starts. Food is placed on the right arm
and every third trial is probed with a 8-arms radial maze.
In "The Maze Environment" window, two pull-down menus are available:
Clear Trajectory:
Clears the trajectory marks from the environment. Once cleared, they can
not be redrawn.
Draw Results:
generates a window that dynamically displays a graph summarizing the behavioral
decisions made by the simulated rat. The behavior shown in the window will
depend on the experiment being performed:
O'Keefe: Results: For either Control or Fornix-Lesioned groups, the yellow dots and the line connecting them reflect the behavior of the rat in the 8-arm radial maze only. The dots are created when the rat arrives at the end of any of the 8 arms. The position of the dot on the graph represents the orientation of the arm.
From inside, as well as from the top, food is represented as a yellow rectangle in the floor of the maze
and water as a cyan rectangle
5 Steps
20 Steps
100 Steps
1000 Steps
Until End:
Tells the rat to keep moving until the end of the experiment, i.e., through
training and testing.
Until End:
Training: Tells the rat to move until reaching criteria for training.
Until End:
Testing: Tells the rat to move until reaching criteria for testing.
University
of Southern California Brain Simulation Lab
All contents copyright (C) 1994-1997. University of Southern California Brain Simulation Lab All rights reserved.Author: Alex Guazzelli <aguazzel@rana.usc.edu>