Doing this "Mice in Maze" preprint for #JournalClub!
Have you read it? What did you think? Feel free to comment
I'll add further comments below, pre and post reading...

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.14.426746v1
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My first thought: mice probably use smell to navigate. This is supported by the rotation test: "Following that rotation the animal did in fact make a few visits to the rotated port location"

One of the best strategies to "navigate" anywhere, regardless of maze complexity!

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I experienced this while training rats in a much less complex maze. They learned super fast at first, I thought I had found a great design. But when I started rotating the maze, making local odour cues irrelevant, it then took them hours (instead of minutes) to learn.

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This paper seems to go way beyond that ("2000 navigation decisions per hour") so I'm looking forward to reading it and being proven wrong!

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On the side, it would have been nice to mention other complex mazes, such as the HexMaze ( https://doi.org/10.1101/441048 ) or the HoneyComb maze ( https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25433).

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I must say I am really surprised by the total absence of statistical tests in this paper it's the first time I see this in a behavioural paper! Not really sure what you can demonstrate without stats but maybe others will have some insights?

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Discussion - "Historical context"... I disagree with the idea that the spatial cognition field moved from "True labyrinths" in the 1900s to extra-simple T-mazes and operant boxes now. There are plenty of complex mazes post 2000! I will list some here (also, see above).

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1. To take or not to take the shortcut: Flexible spatial behaviour of rats based on cognitive map in a lattice maze, 2018

2. Synergistic Benefits of Group Search in Rats, 2020

3. Characteristics of CA1 place fields in a complex maze with multiple choice points 2017

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4. Hippocampal CA1 Place Cells Encode Intended Destination on a Maze with Multiple Choice Points,
2007

5. Spatial learning by mice in 3 dimensions, 2015

6. Volumetric spatial behaviour in rats reveals the anisotropic organisation of navigation, 2021

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7. Complementary Roles of the Hippocampus and the Dorsomedial Striatum during Spatial and Sequence- Based Navigation Behavior, 2013

8. Using hippocampal-striatal loops for spatial navigation and goal-directed decision-making, 2012

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9. Both visual and idiothetic cues contribute to head direction cell stability during navigation along complex routes, 2011

10. Topographical memory analyzed in mice using the Hamlet test, a novel complex maze, 2018

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11. Behavioral and neural correlates of hide-and-seek in rats, 2019

12. Spatial navigation in complex and radial mazes in APP23 animals [...], 2006

13. Dopaminergic neurons promote hippocampal reactivation and spatial memory persistence, 2014

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... aaand the bonuses (bit out of topic but couldn't resist):

14. Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism, 2000

15. Immature dendritic cells navigate microscopic mazes to find tumor cells, 2019

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Also... it is maybe not fair to compare operant boxes, alternative forced-choice tasks and the like, to navigation tasks? Spatial navigation is a natural behaviour for rodents so it is expected that they will be faster at learning a spatial task.

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