Baker-Hawthorne Direct Path Measures in Morris Water Maze Analysis

This technical note defines the Baker-Hawthorne Direct Path Measures for Morris water maze analysis and describes their implementation, interpretation, limitations and recommended application. It explains how these measures identify different forms of initial goal-directed navigation towards the target or its immediate vicinity, preserving information that may be obscured by conventional whole-trial outcome measures. The principles described are applicable to both conventional rodent Morris water maze experiments and virtual reality spatial navigation tasks in humans.