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An introduction to Time periods

Introduction

ANY-maze includes two ways to analyse results across time - Time segments which divide tests across time into equal length 'chunks', and Time periods which can be used to divide a test in any arbitrary way.

Time segments are described in the main Analysis across time topic, whereas Time periods are described here.

Using time periods to compare two parts of a test

Imagine you have a test in which you want to compare the results for the periods 30-90 seconds and 200-260 seconds. Using Time periods, this is very easy to do. First, you would create a new Time period and specify that it starts at 30 seconds and ends at 90 seconds; then, you would create a second time period starting at 200s and ending at 260s. You would then simply analyse your results using Time period as your independent variable.

There is no limit to the number of periods you can create in this way, nor are there any restrictions on the period that each one can cover - which means that two time periods can include some or all of the same part of the test. This can be useful if, for example, you want to look at the results of the first minute of your tests and also for the first 5 minutes - clearly the '5 minute' period will include all of the 'first minute' period.

Periods can be different in different stages

Although a time period will usually cover a certain part of a test, for example 60-90 seconds, there may be situations when the period will differ depending on the stage.

For example, in a fear conditioning experiment, you might present an audible stimulus to the animal at time 60 seconds until time 90 seconds - so you could create a time period called 'Stimulus' and set it to start at 60s and end at 90s. But in the second stage of your experiment, the stimulus is presented at time 280s and lasts until time 310s. Clearly, it would be desirable to have a single 'Stimulus' period, so you could easily compare results for the two stages, and this is where having the ability to define a period as differing between stages is useful.

In this example, you would simply specify that the period is different in different stages, and then enter the start and end time for each stage. The period itself would still be a single item, so you could look at results for the 'Stimulus' period and ANY-maze would automatically cope with the fact that for some tests this would mean the results for the period 60-90s, and for others the period 280-310s.

Periods that depend on what the animal does

In fact, time periods can be even more flexible, in that you can specify that the time a period covers should depend on something the animal does. For example, you might want to compare the behaviour of your different treatment groups during the first 10 seconds following entry into a specific zone. But of course, different animals will enter the zone at different times, so how could you define when the period should start and when it should end?

In this case, you would specify that the time the period covers depends on a Time marker, which can be set by a procedure. Full details can be found in the Time markers topic. In this example, the procedure would wait until the animal enters the zone, and then set a time marker. You can then specify that the Time period should start 0s after the time marker, and end 10s after it. You would then be able to look at the results for the time period, and ANY-maze would automatically cope with the fact that the actual time it covers would be different in every test.

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ANY-maze help topic T0642