The novel object recognition task (NORT)
A NORT experiment was conducted to evaluate the mice’s ability to
recognize new objects versus familiar objects when they were allowed to
explore freely (Dere et al. , 2007). The mice were placed in the
testing room 30 minutes before the experiment on day one following MWM
to become accustomed to the conditions. All the mice were allowed to
acclimate themselves to an open-field arena (50 cm × 50 cm, dim light,
24 °C) and two blocks in it for 10 min twice a day for 2 days. All mice
were allowed to explore two blocks for five minutes on the following
day, and 1 hour and 24 hours later, mice were given five minutes to
explore an unfamiliar block with a different shape and color. The
recognition indexes (%) were calculated by the ratio of the time spent
exploring a novel object over the total amount of time spent in each
group to evaluate memory.