ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Behaviour > Zones > Setting up a zone > Specifying a movable zone

Specifying a movable zone

In brief

In some apparatus, you may have a zone which is not always physically located in the same place. For example, the reward arm of a T-maze or the island in a water-maze. You can specify that a zone is one of these movable zones by selecting an appropriate option from the Position... list on the zone's settings page.

Details

The Position... list has a number of different entries which are explained below:

This is the option for a fixed (i.e. non-movable) zone. All zones are non-movable by default, and it's by selecting a different option to this one that you make a zone movable. If you want to change a zone back from being movable to being non-movable, simply revert to this option. Note: Changing a zone from movable to non-movable will automatically delete any positions you have defined for it.

Choosing this option indicates that the zone is movable and that it adopts different positions for different animals. However, if each animal has multiple trials, the zone will always be in the same position for any individual animal. For example, you might select this option for the Island in a water-maze. For animal 1, you might place the island in the North West, while for animal 2 it might be in the South West; however, these locations won't change between each animal's trials - i.e. however many trials animal 1 has, the island will always be in the North west for all of them.

Choosing this option indicates that the zone is movable and that it can adopt different positions in different trials for the same animal.

In fact, there are two cases which are both included in this option. The first is where the zone adopts one position in the 1st trial, a different position in the 2nd trial, etc. but these positions are always the same irrespective of the animal being tested - e.g.: For trial 1 the zone is always in the NW, in trial 2 it's always in the SW and so on.

The second possibility is that the zone adopts different positions depending on both the trial AND the animal. For example, for trial 1 for animal 1 it's in the NW, for trial 2 for animal 1 it's in the SW; but for trial 1 for animal 2 it's in the SE and in trial 2 for animal 2 it's in the NW.

Note: This option only appears in the list when the protocol already includes at least one other movable zone.

This option can be used to create 'virtual' movable zones. Effectively, such zones don't have any physical positions of their own; they just adopt the same position as another movable zone. The important point is that they can adopt the position of different zones in different trials. Here's an example of when this type of zone is useful:

Imagine you have a place preference box in which you intend to condition animals so that one side of the box is paired with a drug. You decide to balance the drug-paired side between your groups, so for some animals the drug-paired side will be on the left while for others it will be on the right. This drug-paired zone will therefore be a 'classic' movable zone.  Clearly, there will also be a non-drug-paired zone, and this would be defined as a movable zone whose position depends on the position of the drug-paired side (see next option below) - essentially, this would just mean that when the drug-paired side is on the left, the non-drug-paired side would be on the right and vice versa. Now, let's say you want to condition the animals over four days, giving them the drug and confining them to the drug-paired side on days 1 and 3,  and giving them saline and confining them to the non-drug-paired side on days 2 and 4.

So that's our procedure, but let's think about which side an animal will be placed in during each conditioning test. For animal 1, for example, you'll need to know which is his drug-paired side - let's say it's the left - and then you'll need to know which trial you're performing - let's say day 2. In this case, day 2 means a non-drug day so this animal will be placed in his non-drug-paired side, i.e. in the right. To avoid having to follow through this logic before each test, you could include in your protocol a 'Start side' zone whose Position follows the positions of other movable zones. You would then specify that for trial 1, the Start-side's position is the same as the drug-paired side; for trial 2, it's the same as the non-drug-paired side; etc. Now you could include this zone's position in your Test schedule report and ANY-maze would simply show you something like 'Animal 1, trial 2, Start side = Right'. This would simplify your testing and reduce the risk of mistakes. Also note that in this protocol the only thing you'd have to specify before running experiments would be which side is the drug-paired side for each animal. Remember, it's worth investing effort in your protocol, because you'll be able to reuse it in all your experiments.

Note: This option only appears in the list when the protocol already includes at least one other movable zone.

The important point with this option is that it indicates a relationship between this zone's position and the position of another zone. This is best explained with an example: In a Y-maze, you might define two zones, one called the 'Known arm' and one called the 'New arm', and these two zones could be positioned in either of the two 'arms' of the 'Y'. This would mean that if the 'Known arm' was on the left then the 'New arm' would have to be on the right, and if the 'Known arm' was on the right then the 'New arm' would have to be on the left. In other words, the position of one arm would depend on the position of the other.

The advantage of using this option is that you will only need to tell ANY-maze about the position of one of the zones in order for it to deduce the position of the other one.

When you use this option for a zone, then you have to define the actual dependency when you define each position of the zone - see Setting up zone positions for more details.

Setting zone positions

After you specify that a zone is movable, you will need to add one zone position element to your protocol for each of the positions which the zone can adopt*. For example, for a water-maze island, you might need to add four zone positions - one for the North West position, one for the South West, one for the North East and one for the South East. See Setting up zone positions for more details.

* Except for zones whose 'Position follows the positions of other zones' - these are virtual zones which just borrow their positions from other zones.

See also:

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ANY-maze help topic T0322