Response strategies in the radial arm maze: Running around in circles

Response strategies in the radial arm maze: Running around in circles

Interactions between response stereotypy and memory strategies on the eight-arm radial maze.

Three groups of water-deprived rats collected water from the ends of the 8-arm radial maze. Sighted subjects, and subjects blinded either with or without pre-enucleation experience on the radial maze, all retrieved the water efficiently. Most of the subjects exhibited the same response stereotypy, regularly choosing 8 adjacent arms of the maze, then stopping in the center of the maze. The strat...

Spatial pattern learning in the radial arm maze.

Rats experienced a spatial pattern of baited and unbaited arms in an eight-arm radial maze. The spatial pattern remained constant over trials, but the spatial locations that were baited varied unpredictably. Although there was no evidence of control by the spatial pattern during free choice training trials, the rats' ability to locate baited arms in forced choice test trials was superior to tha...

Time-place learning in the eight-arm radial maze.

Rats (n = 4) searched for food on an eight-arm radial maze. Daily 56-min sessions were divided into eight 7-min time zones, during each of which a different location provided food; locations were randomized across subjects before training. The rats obtained multiple pellets within each time zone by leaving and returning to the correct location. Evidence that the rats had knowledge about the tem...

Spatial guidance of choice behavior in the radial-arm maze.

In 6 experiments, the performance of male rats in a 12-arm radial maze was examined. The focus of study was the extent to which the spatial location of individual baited maze arms was determined before the rat was exposed to the extramaze visual cues corresponding to the arm, and thereby guided the rat toward the location of baited arms. Such spatial guidance of choice behavior implies a spatia...