The Forced Swim Test with Water Wheel automatically scores active escapes and eliminates the subjectivity of immobility measurements. Automatically scored wheel rotations directly correspond to active escape attempts.

Although the Porsolt Forced Swim Test remains one of the most widely used behavioral test for screening antidepressants, the modification suggested by S. Nomura et alia (1982) introduces an objective measurement, the number of rotations, as it involves a small water wheel set in a water tank, overcoming the bias intrinsic to Porsolt’s method. In fact, automatically scored wheel rotations directly correspond to active escape attempts.