By default, ANY-maze will show the elapsed time in a test, i.e. it will count up - but if you prefer, it can show the time remaining in the test instead, i.e. count down.

Indicating the position of the animal

ANY-maze can always indicate the centre point of the animal during a test which it does using an orange dot (you can change the colour if you like). This is the most basic animal position indicator and usually you'll want to have it switched on.

You can also choose to have the entire area which the system considers to be the animal shaded. By default this will be in blue, but you can click the little colour swatch next to the option to alter the colour if you wish.

Figure 1. In this plusmaze test, ANY-maze is indicating the animal's entire area (in blue), the position of the animal's centre (the orange dot), and the fact that the experimenter is registering that the animal is rearing by pressing a key on the keyboard.

As well as showing the centre of the animal, ANY-maze can also indicate the position of the animal's head and/or tail, although you need to have switched on head tracking for these options to appear. In this case, you can also have the animal's head-centre-tail joined with lines.

Indicating the animal's orientation

If ANY-maze is analysing the animal's orientation, then you can choose to have the orientation area shaded, which makes it clear what the animal is oriented towards - see figure 2.

Figure 2. The flashlight-like highlighting shows the animal's orientation, making it clear that in this case the animal is oriented towards the white object.

Indicating the animal's activity

When tracking, you might want to show text on the display indicating the activity level of the animal. You can choose to show:

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When the animal is immobile

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When the animal is freezing

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When the animal is rearing

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When a key is pressed

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Any text that is written to the display by a Procedure, using the Output text on display action.

Delaying the video display

In Forced swim and Tail suspension test mode, ANY-maze takes around one second to detect changes of the animal's mobility state. This is inherent in the method ANY-maze uses to assess immobility in these tests and can't be altered.

This means that when ANY-maze updates the display to show the new immobility state, the change will actually have been visible in the video about one second earlier, which can make it very hard to assess the accuracy of the immobility detection.

To address this you can delay the video display by the same amount of time as ANY-maze takes to detect FST/TST immobility - this aligns the video image being displayed with the immobility state being displayed. There are more details about this here.

Showing the real time and or date

When tracking in a live video image, you can choose to display the real time and/or date on the display. This can be displayed in the bottom left or bottom right of the image.

Hiding the name of video files

When tracking from a video file, you can choose to hide the name of the video file that's being tracked from. You might want to do this if there's not enough space for the file name on the toolbar above the apparatus image, or more importantly, if you're running your experiment blind then you might want to hide the file name from the experimenter, in case it includes any information about the animal or treatment.

What to display while testing

Introduction