"Continual Trials" Novel Object Recognition, Object Location and Object-Place-Context

Extending and improving the power of the NOR test of memory.

Novel Object Recognition and Object Location Recognition have long been used with rats and mice as a test of memory. It relies on the rodent's natural behaviour and does not require any food restriction.

Whereas the prevailing one trial a day methodology has inherent limitations and is subject to variability across labs, mainly due to the amount of animal handling that is required, Easton's "Continuous Trials" NOR method enables up to 16 trials a day without handling between trials and was developed with supported from an NC3R's project in four UK universities.

The advantages of "Continual Trials" are as follows:

• Higher statistical power
• Reducing experiment time
• Reducing number of animals
• Reducing the effects of animal handling and the distraction effects this causes - Read More
• Gives a measure of the effects of proactive interference - Read More
• Enables a measure of strategy - Read More
• Long term memory of several objects
• Measures episodic memory - OPC

Manual Scoring App is available for easy manual capture of the data.