Spatial alternation: the T-maze, their procedures and processes

Spatial mazes associated with spatial alternation or conditional election tasks has been widely used in psychology and more recently in neurosciences as strong tools for the study of animal behavior and cognition, particularly in the field of learning and memory. This article provides a briefly review of the use of the T-maze in behavioral research, especially in relation to spatial alternation and memory. On this review highlights the use for over than a century of the spatial mazes in the scientific research as well as the development of a wide variety of forms, protocols and procedures. This review presents evidence about the strategies to perform the task, the memory process involved and the brain structures related, among these the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, striatum and medial frontal cortex.