Source Paper
Cognitive neurobehavior and synaptic plasticity after vagus nerve stimulation in female rats: Interaction between estrous cycle and neurostimulation
Olsen LK, Jones KA, Sharma B, Ethridge VT, Gargas NM et al.
Bioelectron Med • 2026
Novel Object Recognition (NOR)
behavioralRatSprague-Dawley
Objective: To detect changes in recognition memory
Materials & Equipment Checklist
5 items1 from ConductScience
Protocol Steps
1
Training day object exposure
Rats are exposed to two similar objects for three minutes after two minutes of arena habituation
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“Rats were exposed to two similar objects for three min”
2
Object placement
Objects are placed on opposing sides of the arena 47 cm apart
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“Objects were placed on opposing sides of the arenas 47 cm apart”
3
24-hour delay period
Wait 24 hours between training and testing
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“After 24 h, rats were exposed to the same object and a novel object”
4
Elevated Zero Maze exposure
On testing day, rats are exposed to Elevated Zero Maze for five minutes prior to NOR testing
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“Rats were also exposed to the Elevated Zero Maze paradigm for five min prior to the beginning of NOR object exposure on testing day only”
5
Testing day habituation
Rats habituate to the arena for two minutes before object exposure
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“On training day and testing day, rats habituated to the arena for two min prior to object exposure”
6
Testing day object exposure
Rats are exposed to one familiar object and one novel object for three minutes
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“rats were exposed to the same object and a novel object for three min”
7
Behavioral tracking
Object exploration activity is monitored using nose-point tracking within defined object spaces
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“The amount of time the animal's nose-point was within the novel or familiar object space was used as a proxy”