Water Maze Comprehension Datasheet

For this assessment you will be working on your own. You will need to access the teaching software on student PCs (eg in the Learning Centre). Select PharmaCALogy ? Water Maze.

Select Run Maze Experiment ? Get New Problem. (Ignore the suggested title of the new problem, and click the mouse button to proceed). 

From here you can initiate experiments involving rats which have been treated with various drugs (or vehicle only). 

Task
1. Does scopolamine produce a cognitive defect as demonstrated by significant changes in the performance of animals in the water maze? 
2. If there is an effect, is this changed by the concurrent administration of the anticholinesterases neostigmine or physostigmine?

a) Collect the path length data for 6 rats per treatment over 4 days. There are four treatments in all. Enter your raw data into an Excel spreadsheet and calculate t-test P values for each day for each treatment group compared with its appropriate control(s) using Excel’s two sample t-test assuming equal variances.
Make a note of the means of your data sets + SEMs (standard errors of the mean), and the P values, and present this data in three tables. 
20 marks

b) Plot the means of your data onto a total of two line graphs. Graphs should be of path length vs time (i.e. day number). One graph should show scopolamine data vs vehicle 1 data (i.e two sets of data) over 4 days. The other graph should show the effects of concurrent administration of each anticholinesterase with scopolamine, compared to scopolamine alone (three sets of data). For each data point add SEM error bars and asterisks denoting statistical significance.
30 marks

c) Give a summary of your findings by answering points (1) and (2) above, and justify your answers using your statistical data judiciously (max. 500 words total). Your answer should include a comment on the probable pharmacological mechanisms involved.
45 marks

d) Referencing:
5 marks
Marks will be deducted for:
– pages of irrelevant statistical data;
– untidy / poorly assembled work;
– poor explanations;

You can plot your data as a line, or as a bar chart.
But you must include Y error bars (to show a measure of precision for your data).

The Y error bars are +/- standard error of the mean (SEM), defined as:




You can easily calculate this, or use e.g. Excel to find this.
Excel will also do your t-test, and find your P values.
This test yields a P value.

If p<0.05 then data sets are significantly different at the 5% level
If p<0.01 then data sets are significantly different at the 1% level
If p<0.001 then data sets are significantly different at the 0.1% level (ie highly significantly different).
If p>0.05 then data sets are not significantly different