ABMR
Animal Behavioral Model Report: Elevated Plus Maze.
11/2/23:
2. The Elevated Plus Maze serves as a common behavioral tool to evaluate the anti-anxiety impacts of drugs and hormones in rodents, aiding in the identification of brain regions associated with anxiety-related behavior. The maze works by placing either a rat or mouse at the intersection of a maze's four arms, with one of the arms being open. A video-tracking system and observer record their entries and time spent in each arm for about 5 minutes. Additionally, they recorded the rodents' behaviors while in the maze such as rearing, head dips, and stretched-attend postures. Based on the results they got from rodents they concluded that enhanced activity in the open arm signifies anti-anxiety behavior. If you would like to perform this experiment yourself, all you would need is an elevated plus maze that you could personally make, a camera, a timer, and a rodent to experiment.
3. I like this experiment because it shows how animals act naturally and what they do when given anti-anxiety medicine. The maze test lasts 5-10 minutes and the results show that naturally, rats and mice like to stay hidden in the closed area more than stay in the open area. The validity of this method is unique and I think it works very well for showing how the rodents act. The only problem I can see with this experiment would be the mouse or rat acting abnormally and or not moving at all in the maze. This would skew test results and not show proper results. Other than this, I think the experiment is useful for showing the effects of anti-anxiety medicine and how rodents act with or without it.
Work Cited
Walf, Alicia A, and Cheryl A Frye. “The Use of the Elevated plus Maze as an Assay of Anxiety-Related Behavior in Rodents.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 1 Mar. 2007, www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2007.44.