Title: water maze test
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - water maze test
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.12175
Status: current

Definition
Procedure in which a rat or mouse is placed in a pool of water and observed to swim, using visual environmental clues, to an invisible submerged platform that allows escape from the water.

Note
It is intended to test spatial memory and learning.

Related Terms
- Biel water maze: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/11637
- maze: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/11859

Source
- PAC, 2015, 87, 841. 'IUPAC Glossary of terms used in neurotoxicology (IUPAC Recommendations 2015)' on page 916 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2015-0103)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/12175/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/12175/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/12175/xml

Citation: Citation: 'water maze test' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.12175
License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms.
Collection: If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org .
Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using.
Accessed: 2026-07-28T07:06:35+00:00