Center for Injury Biomechanics, Materials, and Medicine

The Morris Water Maze is a behavioral test used with rodents. The Morris Water Maze measures the subject spatial memory, movement control and cognitive mapping.

The Morris water maze  is a behavioral tool used to study spatial learning and memory.  The basic procedure for this task is that the rat is placed in a large circular pool and is required to find an invisible platform that allows it to escape the water by using various cues. The animal is given several rounds of training before the actual testing day. The escape latency, which is the time it takes to find the platform is noted. In normal animal, the escape latency improves with each training cycle. Hence, an extension of this latency suggests a cognitive decline or deficit in spatial learning/ memory.