Research data · Disease model and test

Barnes maze in brain injury research

From 2021 to 2025, 41 animal research papers on brain injury mentioned the Barnes maze in their title or abstract.

That is 2.3 times the 18 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on brain injury that mention any of the 90 tests we count grew more slowly, to 1.6 times as many.

41 papers on brain injury from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the Barnes maze
5% of the papers on brain injury that mention any test mention the Barnes maze
8% of the papers that mention the Barnes maze are on brain injury
2.3 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on brain injury 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
YearPapers
20011
20021
20034
20041
20051
20060
20071
20081
20091
20102
20112
20125
20134
20143
20154
20164
20173
20185
20195
20207
202110
20227
20237
20246
202511
2026 (part year)12

Papers on brain injury that mention the Barnes maze fell from 10 in 2021 to 6 in 2024, then rose to 11 in 2025. Part of this dip may come from PubMed's indexing rather than from fewer studies. Where PubMed has indexed a paper, we take its disease models from that indexing. Otherwise PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract, or the paper is not counted here. Papers that PubMed indexed under the subject heading Animals also fell and rose, from 200,221 in 2021 to 156,447 in 2023 and 235,479 in 2025.

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 41 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse
27 papers 66%
Rat
13 papers 32%
Other animals
1 paper 2%

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

Tests mentioned alongside the Barnes maze

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 41 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 17 (41%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

4 papers 10%
3 papers 7%
3 papers 7%
2 papers 5%
1 paper 2%

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the Barnes maze in its title or abstract, and studies brain injury.

We tell whether a paper studies brain injury from its MeSH terms, the subject headings the National Library of Medicine adds when it indexes a paper. For a paper without MeSH terms, PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one disease model. A paper that mentions the test only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low.

The page on brain injury research names the subject headings we count as brain injury. Download the test list for the search terms we used for the Barnes maze, or the paper list for the PubMed ID of every paper behind these counts. Our main page, Behavioral tests in published research, has the full method and each source's terms of use.

More tests and disease models

Every pairing of a disease model and a test with 30 or more papers from 2021 to 2025 has a page like this one.

Papers on other disease models that mention the Barnes maze

The page on the Barnes maze counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on brain injury research ranks the tests by their papers on brain injury.

How to cite

APA

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

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_brain_injury_barnes_maze_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Barnes maze in brain injury research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/brain-injury/barnes-maze},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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