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ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Inputs and outputs > Movement detectors > Movement detector measures
Movement detector measures
 | ANY-maze has been designed to be extended, and we'll be delighted to add any new measures you might find useful, for free! Just contact ANY-maze Support. |
ANY-maze will score the following measures for a movement detector. Note that these measures are ONLY available for the apparatus as whole.
Count
| Description | Reports the number of times beams in the movement detector's photobeam array were broken. |
| Calculation method | Counts breaks reported by the photobeam array. Note that ANY-maze does NOT count repeated breaks of the same beam - this is to avoid counting small oscillatory movements of the animal's body as movement (i.e. as in changes of location). For example, consider an animal that moves across the area covered by a photobeam array: we would see beam 1 broken, then beam 2, then beam 3, etc. Now consider an animal that is sitting in one place and grooming; its leg might keep breaking the same beam again and again; this would not be counted as movement. |
| Analysis in zones | Not available |
| Analysis across time | This measure can be analysed across time. For any time period, the result is the number of counts that occurred during the time period. |
Time moving
| Description | Reports the amount of time that the animal was moving. |
| Calculation method | Sums the durations of all the individual bouts of movement. |
| Analysis in zones | Not available |
| Analysis across time | This measure can be analysed across time. For any time period, the result is the duration of the movement within the time period. |
| Notes | Movements are detected by a beam being broken. This is necessarily an instantaneous event, but it is deemed to mean that the animal is moving and will continue to do so for a certain period (the movement detector's time-out). If another beam is broken within this period, then the animal is deemed to still be moving and so the movement bout extends to include this break. This continues until no break occurs within the timeout period, when the bout is then deemed to end. This mechanism is described in detail in this topic. |
Latency to first beam break
| Description | Reports the latency to the first beam being broken in the test - i.e. the first bout of movement. |
| Calculation method | The time up to the first beam break during the test is measured. |
| Analysis in zones | Not available |
| Analysis across time | This measure cannot be analysed across time. |
| Notes | Beams that are already broken at the test start have no effect on this measure. |
See also:
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ANY-maze help topic T0188
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