A still of the Morris water maze this video shows. The screen reads: Find the hidden platform.
The Morris water maze in 60 seconds
Your channel hereExplainer · 60 seconds
Explain how an animal finds a platform it cannot see, and what its search tells researchers about memory.
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What to do and say
A sample script of about 90 words. Say it your own way.
- 0:00
DoOpen on a photo of the pool from its product page, and ask where the platform is.
SayWhere is the platform? The rat can't see it either.
- 0:05
DoExplain the trial: the animal starts at the wall and swims through cloudy water to a platform just under the surface.
SayThis is the Morris water maze. The animal starts at the wall of a round pool. The water is made cloudy, so a platform just under the surface stays hidden.
- 0:25
DoExplain how its time to the platform drops over trials as it learns the cues around the room.
SayIt finds the platform from cues around the room. Over trials it swims there faster and more directly. That drop in time is learning.
- 0:40
DoExplain the probe trial: with the platform gone, where the animal searches shows what it remembers.
SayThen researchers take the platform away. An animal that remembers keeps searching the part of the pool where it used to be.
- 0:55
DoShow the maze's page on conductscience.com.
SaySee the maze at conductscience.com.
Posting it yourself? Say that ConductScience paid you, in the video or the caption, and use the platform's paid partnership label if it has one.
What viewers should learn
In the Morris water maze an animal learns to find a hidden platform from cues around the room. Researchers use it to study spatial learning and memory.
Classic study: Morris, 1981.
Read the product page before you film
Start from its page: Morris water maze on conductscience.com. It has the sizes, what researchers measure and photos of the apparatus. Anyone can open it.
Show the photos on its page or a diagram you draw. Film a maze only where you have permission. Never show real participants, children, patients, private records or unpublished results. Get permission before you film at your school or workplace, or name it. The handbook has the rest.