Morris Water Maze for Mice

A white circular plastic tank (122 cm in diameter) with walls 76 cm high, filled with water maintained at 22°±2 °C, made opaque by the addition of a nontoxic white paint, was used to perform the Morris water maze test, as previously described.^{13 (link)} Briefly, mice were trained to swim to a submerged Plexiglas platform from 4 different starting points, on a daily basis for a total of 5 days. If they failed to find the platform within 60 s, they were manually guided to the platform and allowed to remain there for 15 s. Mice were trained to reach the training criterion of 20 s (escape latency). Mice were assessed in the probe trial 24 h after the last training session. The probe consisted in a free 180 s swim in the pool without platform. Each animal's performance was monitored using the Any-Maze video tracking system, which provided data for the acquisition parameters (latency to find the platform and distance swam and) and the probe trial parameters (number of entries in the target platform zone of the platform and time in quadrants).