The Honeycomb Maze provides a novel test to study hippocampal-dependent spatial navigation

We describe the Honeycomb Maze, a novel behavioral paradigm for the study of spatial navigation. The maze consists of 37 platforms which can be raised or lowered independently. Place navigation requires an animal to go to a goal platform from any of several start platforms via a series of sequential choices. On each, the animal is confined to a raised platform and given a choice between two of the six adjacent platforms, the correct one being the platform with the smallest angle to the goal heading-direction. Rats learn rapidly and their choices are influenced by three factors: the angle between the two choice platforms, the distance from the goal, and the angle between the correct platform and the goal heading-direction. Rats with hippocampal damage are impaired in learning and are affected by all three factors. The Honeycomb Maze is a significant improvement over current spatial navigation tests such as the Morris Water Maze1–3; it controls the animal’s choices at each point in the maze, provides the ability to assess knowledge of the goal direction from any location, allows the identification of factors influencing task performance, and affords the possibility of concomitant single cell recording.