Lab Rats: Where did the rats go?

These plots show the directions individual rats chose to explore in a circular maze. The maze was an open field with a pattern of lights projected on its floor. The pattern indicated where hidden food would be located. The patterns show how well rats learned the patterns and used them to guide their search for the food. The length of the colored lines indicates the strength of their choice, with longer lines indicated that more of their choices were in that direction. While individual rats performed better or worse, overall, they all showed good to excellent control by the spatial pattern. Thus, rats are able to detect and encode spatial patterns.