A - Maze Your Hippocampus

     The Hippocampus is structure in the middle of the brain that is important in learning and memory.  The hippocampus helps to form new memories and then organizes them for long term storage in other parts of the brain, such as the frontal lobes.   

 Hippocampus Shown In Blue - 1*

     Toady Your going to test your own hippocampus to determine how well you can form new memories.  To do this we're going to run our own Morris Water Maze.  The Morris Water Maze is a test usually preformed on mice and rats.  The animals are placed in the middle of a pool of water and swim around until they find a hidden platform.  They do so because they do not want to be in the water, but the test works because they will swim. Hopefully after the first couple of times in the maze, the animal can remember where the platform is and swim straight to it.

Model Morris Water Maze. 2*

     To perfrom our own Morris Water Maze, we will try to find a hidden hole in peice of cardboard underneath a sheet of paper.  We will move a pen over the top of a sheet of paper until it passes over the hole underneath and breaks through the sheet of paper.  Hopefully, the our own hippocampus will help us to create a new memory for where the hidden hole is located.  If we can remember the hole's location, then we should be able to find it faster each successive time we try. 

1* - Image Taken From: http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2007/04/stress_precedes_volume_reducti.php

2* - Image Taken From: http://www.ratbehavior.org/RatsAndMazes.htm

Links:

1. Watermaze.org-In depth description of the Morris Water Maze using rats.

2. UCLA Behavioral Testing Core-Pretty picture of the maze with simple description.

3. Wikipedia- wiki entry

4. Rat Maze -youtube 18 sec video of a rat finding the platform

5. Role of hippocampus

6. Spatial Navigation and Gender-article on gender's role in a computer simulation for humans. 

7. Script Link