Hello!

I performed Morris Water Maze with 5 days acquisition and a sixth-day probe test in rats. Rats had 4 trials per day. Data analysis is confusing. Most of the protocols said that acquisition trials should be averaged in blocks of four and plotted as block means (± s.e.m.). However, sometimes you could choose one trial per day (e.g. first trial of every acqusition day) instead of averaging four trials.

However, it is clear that the results differ in those two methods. For example, if I choose the first trials per day, I could not find any differences in the first day of the experiment between the control group and the disease model group (Parkinson). It is quite normal since both control and disease groups of animals are not aware of any platform in the maze on the first trial of the experiment. If I average the four trials per day, then I found statistical differences between my groups even on the first day. That is also OK since the disease group may not learn as easily as control.

I wonder that if it is OK to use both of the methods that I mentioned? Is there anything wrong with those two ways to analyze data accurately?

Similar questions and discussions