Research data · Anxiety-like behavior

Light-dark box

Name: Light-dark box in published research
Creator: ConductScience
Published: 2026-11-10

From 2021 to 2025, 725 animal research papers mentioned the light-dark box in their title or abstract, ranking it 22nd of the 90 tests we track.

That is 1.5 times the 480 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

725 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test

1.5 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

22nd of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025

48% of these papers used mice and 30% used rats

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention the light-dark box, 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	33
2002	36
2003	36
2004	38
2005	42
2006	47
2007	55
2008	64
2009	60
2010	72
2011	88
2012	82
2013	92
2014	102
2015	116
2016	107
2017	122
2018	113
2019	138
2020	149
2021	162
2022	136
2023	140
2024	125
2025	162
2026 (part year)	170

Papers that mention the light-dark box fell from 162 in 2021 to 125 in 2024, then rose to 162 in 2025. Papers that PubMed indexed under the MeSH heading Animals also fell and rose, from 200,221 in 2021 to 156,447 in 2023 and 235,479 in 2025. We take each paper's species from PubMed's indexing whenever it names one, so part of this dip may come from the indexing rather than from fewer studies.

Papers that mention the light-dark box 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	24	10
2002	23	14
2003	26	14
2004	24	12
2005	21	21
2006	29	16
2007	37	16
2008	47	20
2009	41	18
2010	49	19
2011	52	26
2012	61	19
2013	59	26
2014	60	28
2015	67	33
2016	54	39
2017	63	40
2018	58	37
2019	72	42
2020	87	36
2021	74	50
2022	63	37
2023	72	47
2024	54	43
2025	85	44

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 725 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse

348 48%

Rat

221 30%

Zebrafish

152 21%

Other animals

30 4%

Fruit fly

4 1%

“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 575 of the 725 papers, so each bar is a share of those 575.

C57BL mice

102 18%

Wistar rats

81 14%

Sprague-Dawley rats

40 7%

Knockout mice

26 5%

Transgenic mice

14 2%

Long-Evans rats

7 1%

ICR mice

5 1%

Obese mice

3 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 light-dark box and study that disease model, with its share of the 725 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

Anxiety

374 52%

Depression

100 14%

Psychological stress

58 8%

Cognitive impairment and dementia

37 5%

Substance use disorders

33 5%

Epilepsy and seizures

32 4%

26 4%

23 3%

13 2%

12 2%

Tests mentioned alongside the light-dark box

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 725 papers that mention the light-dark box.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

283 39%

190 26%

132 18%

83 11%

55 8%

Novel object recognition

54 7%

Sucrose preference test

50 7%

Fear conditioning

43 6%

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention the light-dark box and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026. We show four of the five most cited papers and leave out one because of words in its title.

Anxiety and Alzheimer's disease: Behavioral analysis and neural basis in rodent models of Alzheimer's-related neuropathology.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 2021. 139 citations.
The zebrafish (Danio rerio) anxiety test battery: comparison of behavioral responses in the novel tank diving and light-dark tasks following exposure to anxiogenic and anxiolytic compounds.
Psychopharmacology (Berl), 2022. 82 citations.
Ventral pallidal GABAergic neurons control wakefulness associated with motivation through the ventral tegmental pathway.
Mol Psychiatry, 2021. 81 citations.
TNF signaling pathway-mediated microglial activation in the PFC underlies acute paradoxical sleep deprivation-induced anxiety-like behaviors in mice.
Brain Behav Immun, 2022. 75 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 light-dark box only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 13 reviews. For 150 of the 725 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 anxiety-like behavior tests

These anxiety-like behavior 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). Light-dark box in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/light-dark-box

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_light_dark_box_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Light-dark box in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/light-dark-box},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

Apparatus for the light-dark box

Our store sells two products for the light-dark box.

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Papers that name our apparatus

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

4 papers from 2017 to 2024 name our Light Dark Box. See the papers