Research data ยท Attention and executive function

Five-choice serial reaction time task

From 2021 to 2025, 103 animal research papers mentioned the five-choice serial reaction time task in their title or abstract, ranking it 56th of the 90 tests we track.

That is 41% fewer than the 174 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests rose 22% over the same span.

103 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test
41% fewer papers than in 2011 to 2015
56th of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025
58% of these papers used rats and 38% used mice

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention the five-choice serial reaction time task, 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
YearPapers
20018
20029
200315
20048
200515
200615
200724
200817
200932
201020
201138
201233
201332
201432
201539
201632
201735
201829
201930
202026
202129
202220
202318
202420
202516
2026 (part year)7

Papers that mention the five-choice serial reaction time task in mice and in rats, by year, 2001 to 2025

  • Mouse
  • Rat
Show the counts for each year and species
Papers by year, mice and rats
YearMouseRat
200117
200207
2003214
200424
2005212
200659
2007421
2008114
2009527
2010415
2011733
2012726
20131019
2014822
2015927
20161617
20171222
20181415
20191319
2020817
2021622
2022811
2023116
2024912
202559

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 103 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Rat
60 papers 58%
Mouse
39 papers 38%
Other animals
4 papers 4%
Zebrafish
1 paper 1%

โ€œOther animalsโ€ 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 86 of the 103 papers, so each bar is a share of those 86.

Long-Evans rats
13 papers 15%
C57BL mice
12 papers 14%
Sprague-Dawley rats
10 papers 12%
Wistar rats
9 papers 10%
Knockout mice
4 papers 5%
Transgenic mice
3 papers 3%
DBA mice
1 paper 1%
Spontaneously hypertensive rats
1 paper 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 five-choice serial reaction time task and study that disease model, with its share of the 103 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

Tests mentioned alongside the five-choice serial reaction time task

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 103 papers that mention the five-choice serial reaction time task.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention the five-choice serial reaction time task and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026. We show three of the five most cited papers and leave out two because of words in their titles.

  1. Bi-directional regulation of cognitive control by distinct prefrontal cortical output neurons to thalamus and striatum.

    Nat Commun, 2021. 74 citations.

  2. Temporally Specific Roles of Ventral Tegmental Area Projections to the Nucleus Accumbens and Prefrontal Cortex in Attention and Impulse Control.

    J Neurosci, 2021. 44 citations.

  3. Moderate prenatal alcohol exposure impairs cognitive control, but not attention, on a rodent touchscreen continuous performance task.

    Genes Brain Behav, 2021. 31 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 five-choice serial reaction time task only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 1 review. For 17 of the 103 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 attention and executive function tests

These attention and executive function 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). Five-choice serial reaction time task in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/five-choice-serial-reaction-time

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_five_choice_serial_reaction_time_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Five-choice serial reaction time task in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/five-choice-serial-reaction-time},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

Apparatus for the five-choice serial reaction time task

Our store sells one product for the five-choice serial reaction time task.

Shop the apparatus