In this paper, we proposed an automatic spherical maze generation framework. Traditional mazes are generated on two or three dimensional spaces, with regular grids as walls and paths. Instead of pure two or three dimensional mazes, we automatically generate maze on the surface of a sphere, which provides a unique and fresh maze solving experience. Because regular grids on spherical surface will...

The striatum plays an important role in "habitual" learning and memory and has been hypothesized to implement a reinforcement-learning algorithm to select actions to perform given the current sensory input. Many experimental approaches to striatal activity have made use of temporally structured tasks, which imply that the striatal representation is temporal. To test this assumption, we recorded...

Although today there is a wide acceptance that both genetics and environmental experiences define an animal’s behavior, at one time it was thought that perhaps environmental experience alone determined an animal’s behavior. Some of the first definitive work, published by Tryon in the 1940's, supported the genetic basis of behavior. Tryon studied rats and their ability to complete a maze. He gro...

We define the Rook Jumping Maze, provide historical perspective, and describe a generation method for such mazes. When applying stochastic local search algorithms to maze design, most creative effort concerns the definition of an objective function that rates maze quality. We define and discuss several maze features to consider in such a function definition. Finally, we share our preferred desi...

The Barnes maze is one of the main behavioral tasks used to study spatial learning and memory. The Barnes maze is a task conducted on "dry land" in which animals try to escape from a brightly lit exposed circular open arena to a small dark escape box located under one of several holes at the periphery of the arena. In comparison with another classical spatial learning and memory task, the Morri...

In the present study, we used a dry maze task to assess the spatial learning ability of C57BL/6N and BALB/cA mice besides the water maze task. In Experiment 1, the performance of C57BL/6N and BALB/cA mice in the water maze task and dry maze task were investigated. In the former task, the mice had to learn the position of a hidden platform submerged below the water surface and they had to learn ...