Figure 4
From: A generalised framework for detailed classification of swimming paths inside the Morris Water Maze
Manual classification of the full swimming paths. White bars: control group; Black bars: stressed group; the two groups were compared over the complete set of trials using the Friedman test (shown on the top right corner of each graph). In the manual classification of the full swimming paths, certain behavioural classes (Focused Search, Chaining Response and Scanning Surroundings) couldn’t be identified. Significant difference (Friedman test p-value = 0.015, Q = 5.888, k = 2) was detected only for the Thigmotaxis strategy in favour of the stressed animal group, indicating that stressed animals are implementing it more often than the control animals and have less chances of detecting the platform. This is relevant to the performance measurements (see Fig. 3) where stressed animals run faster and sweep longer swimming paths, but still fail to find the platform in less time than the control group. For more information about each behavioural strategy refer to Methods.
