ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > Test equipment designed specifically for ANY-maze > The Repeated Acquisition and Performance Chamber (RAPC) > Performing experiments and analysing results for RAPC

Performing experiments and analysing results for RAPC

Introduction

Having set up an ANY-maze protocol for RAPC, you are ready to use the protocol in an experiment. In this topic, we'll create a very simple experiment, run a test, and then look at the results. Clearly a 'real' experiment would be more sophisticated, but you should find it easy to build on the basic experiment described here.

  
 •Create the experiment and load the RAPC protocol 
 •Add some treatments and animals 
 •Perform a test 
 •View the test results 
 •RAPC measures  

Create the experiment and load the RAPC protocol

If you have just completed the steps in Setting up an ANY-maze protocol for RAPC, then you won't need to do anything here as you will already have an experiment open which will contain the RAPC protocol. Otherwise, you will need to do the following:

 1.Switch to the File page. 
 2.If you already have an experiment open, then select New experiment in the list on left side of the page. 
 3.The right-hand side of the page will show various 'documents', one of which will represent the protocol you saved earlier; select it.  

Add some treatments and animals

With the RAPC protocol loaded. you can add the treatment groups and animals for your experiment. We're going to add just two groups with 2 animals each, but of course you could set up a more sophisticated experiment.

 1.If necessary, switch to the Experiment page. 
 2.In the spreadsheet on the right-hand side of the page enter a treatment of 'Drug' with an 'N' of 2, and a treatment of 'Saline', also with an 'N' of 2.  

Perform a test

You're now ready to perform a test. (The details given here assume you will use a mouse to run this test, but you could just use your hand if you prefer; however do remember to behave like a mouse, so break the start beam and then work down the compartments in sequence opening doors before finally breaking the end beam).

 1.Latch two doors between each compartment closed and leave one open. It doesn't matter which doors you choose as the 'open' doors. 
 2.Place an animal in the RAPC start box.  
 3.In ANY-maze, switch to the Tests page 
 4.Click the button. The test will start and the test clock will begin to count up. 
 5.Open the sliding door between the RAPC start box and the first chamber. 

The animal will leave the start box (we hope) - when it does, it will break the 'start beam'. The fact that the test clock started before you opened the door does not matter, as the 'Time to perform the task' will be the time from the 'start' beam break to the 'end' beam break.

As the animal opens doors, you will see the door name displayed on the screen.

Eventually the animal will arrive at the 'reward' compartment and will break the 'end beam' - the test will then end.

View the test results

Having completed the test, we can look at the test results:

 1.The Test schedule report will currently be shown on the left of the Tests page. The report will show 4 tests, one of which has been completed - this is the test you just performed. 
 2.Click the test number 1 (it's a link). The Test details report will open. 

  

The Test details report includes a Results section which will show the results of the test. These will be something like this:

 Test duration34.9s
 RAPC - Type 1 errors5   
 RAPC - Type 2 errors1   
 RAPC - Door sequence1312
 Time to perform task30.4s

RAPC measures

RAPC - Type 1 errors

Shows the number of times the animal tried to open an incorrect (latched) door to pass from one chamber to another.

RAPC - Type 2 errors

Shows the number of times the animal opened a correct (non-latched) door, but didn't actually go through from one compartment to the next.

RAPC - Door sequence

Shows the correct sequence of doors through the box. You don't need to tell ANY-maze this sequence, it works it out for itself. So in the example, the non-latched doors were:

 •Door 1 from the first to second compartments 
 •Door 3 from the second to third compartments 
 •Door 1 from the third to fourth compartments 
 •Door 2 from the fourth to fifth compartments  
 •Note that if the animal fails to fully traverse the box, the Door sequence will not be shown. 

The 'Door sequence' can be used as an independent variable when analysing results, making it easy to see whether there was a difference between the animals based on which doors were open and which were latched shut.

Time to perform task

Shows the time from the animal breaking the 'start' beam to breaking the 'end' beam - i.e. the time to traverse the box.

Summary

That completes the ANY-maze RAPC documentation. Of course, ANY-maze provides lots of other features not described here, but these are documented in the general help topics as they're not RAPC-specific.

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ANY-maze help topic T1243