What maze has arms radiating from a central platform to test spatial memory?

What maze has arms radiating from a central platform to test spatial memory? The radial arm maze does. Its arms extend outward like spokes from a central starting area, allowing researchers to measure how animals remember visited locations.

The apparatus was designed by David S. Olton and L. R. Samuelson in 1976. The original version had eight evenly spaced arms, with food placed at the ends. A rat must repeatedly return to the center before choosing another arm, creating a controlled test of spatial decisions. Researchers can record whether it revisits an arm and whether it remembers which arms contain rewards.

The maze separates working memory from reference memory. Working memory concerns which arms the animal has already visited during the current trial; reference memory concerns stable information, such as which arms are consistently rewarded. The radial arm maze is often confused with the elevated plus maze, which primarily examines anxiety-like behavior, or the Barnes maze, which tests spatial navigation on a circular platform. Results also suggest that rats use relationships among environmental cues rather than relying only on smell or a single local landmark.