Water maze (neuroscience)

A water maze is a behavioral assay used in neuroscience to test an animal's ability to learn, remember, and adapt. In a typical water maze task, a mouse or rat is placed in a maze in which the alleys are filled with water, providing a motivation to escape.

Many different mazes exist, such as T- and Y-mazes, Cincinnati water mazes, and radial arm mazes. Water mazes have been used to test discrimination learning and spatial learning abilities. The Morris water navigation task is often called a "water maze task", but this is erroneous as it is not, properly speaking, a maze. The development of these mazes has aided research into, for example, hippocampal synaptic plasticity, NMDA receptor function, and looking into neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease.