Research data · Spatial learning and memory

Barnes maze

Name: Barnes maze in published research
Creator: ConductScience
Published: 2026-11-10

From 2021 to 2025, 499 animal research papers mentioned the Barnes maze in their title or abstract, ranking it 26th of the 90 tests we track.

That is 2.6 times the 194 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests grew to 1.2 times as many over the same span.

Shop the apparatus See all 90 tests

499 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test

2.6 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

26th of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025

64% of these papers used mice and 36% used rats

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention the Barnes maze, by year, 2001 to 2026

The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.

Papers in a full year
2026 so far

Show the counts for each year

Papers by year
Year	Papers
2001	3
2002	3
2003	9
2004	10
2005	4
2006	5
2007	11
2008	17
2009	14
2010	17
2011	30
2012	37
2013	40
2014	33
2015	54
2016	42
2017	45
2018	83
2019	75
2020	69
2021	79
2022	95
2023	91
2024	108
2025	126
2026 (part year)	130

Papers that mention the Barnes maze in mice and in rats, by year, 2001 to 2025

Mouse
Rat

Mouse Rat

Show the counts for each year and species

Papers by year, mice and rats
Year	Mouse	Rat
2001	2	1
2002	2	1
2003	2	6
2004	6	3
2005	2	3
2006	3	2
2007	9	2
2008	8	9
2009	9	4
2010	11	5
2011	17	11
2012	23	14
2013	29	14
2014	23	11
2015	31	18
2016	25	16
2017	28	15
2018	53	29
2019	48	25
2020	39	33
2021	56	25
2022	58	35
2023	56	31
2024	67	42
2025	80	48

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 499 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse

317 64%

Rat

181 36%

Other animals

10 2%

“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the other species in this chart.

Strains and genetic lines

Strain names come from the MeSH terms PubMed adds when it indexes a paper. PubMed has indexed 382 of the 499 papers, so each bar is a share of those 382.

C57BL mice

126 33%

Transgenic mice

62 16%

Sprague-Dawley rats

53 14%

Wistar rats

47 12%

Knockout mice

27 7%

Long-Evans rats

4 1%

BALB/c mice

4 1%

Transgenic rats

4 1%

A paper indexed under two of these headings, such as knockout mice and a strain, counts under both.

Disease models these papers study

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention the Barnes maze and study that disease model, with its share of the 499 papers. The model comes from a paper's MeSH terms. For a paper PubMed has not indexed, it comes from PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, when that service finds the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one model.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 by disease model

Cognitive impairment and dementia

232 46%

Alzheimer disease

96 19%

Anxiety

49 10%

Brain injury

41 8%

Stroke and brain ischemia

27 5%

Aging

26 5%

Depression

23 5%

Epilepsy and seizures

21 4%

Psychological stress

13 3%

Diabetes

11 2%

Tests mentioned alongside the Barnes maze

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 499 papers that mention the Barnes maze.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

Novel object recognition

109 22%

75 15%

64 13%

51 10%

42 8%

30 6%

24 5%

20 4%

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention the Barnes maze and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026.

Dexmedetomidine attenuates sepsis-associated inflammation and encephalopathy via central α2A adrenoceptor.
Brain Behav Immun, 2021. 216 citations.
Long-term exercise pre-training attenuates Alzheimer's disease-related pathology in a transgenic rat model of Alzheimer's disease.
Geroscience, 2022. 86 citations.
RIPK1 or RIPK3 deletion prevents progressive neuronal cell death and improves memory function after traumatic brain injury.
Acta Neuropathol Commun, 2021. 64 citations.
Metformin prevents p-tau and amyloid plaque deposition and memory impairment in diabetic mice.
Exp Brain Res, 2021. 60 citations.
Toll-like receptor 2 activation and up-regulation by high mobility group box-1 contribute to post-operative neuroinflammation and cognitive dysfunction in mice.
J Neurochem, 2021. 58 citations.

How we counted

A count is the number of animal research papers whose title or abstract mentions one of the test's search terms. It is not a count of experiments, labs or animals.

A paper that mentions the Barnes maze only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 1 review. For 117 of the 499 papers, PubMed's indexing gave no species, so the species came from PubTator 3 finding one in the title or abstract.

The test's search terms are in the test list download. The full method, with each source and its terms of use, is on our main page, Behavioral tests in published research.

More spatial learning and memory tests

These spatial learning and memory tests also have a page, with their papers from 2021 to 2025. Each test with 30 or more papers gets one.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Barnes maze in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/barnes-maze

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_barnes_maze_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Barnes maze in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/barnes-maze},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

Apparatus for the Barnes maze

Our store sells one product for the Barnes maze.

Shop the apparatus

Papers that name our apparatus

We keep our own list of published papers whose text names our equipment. Those that mention the Barnes maze in the title or abstract are already in the counts above.

35 papers from 2018 to 2026 name our Barnes Maze. See the papers