Research data · Disease model and test
Forced swim test in brain injury research
From 2021 to 2025, 48 animal research papers on brain injury mentioned the forced swim test in their title or abstract.
That is 3.2 times the 15 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.
Papers by year
Animal research papers on brain injury that mention the forced swim test, 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
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2001 | 1 |
| 2002 | 0 |
| 2003 | 0 |
| 2004 | 0 |
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2006 | 3 |
| 2007 | 1 |
| 2008 | 4 |
| 2009 | 0 |
| 2010 | 1 |
| 2011 | 2 |
| 2012 | 3 |
| 2013 | 1 |
| 2014 | 6 |
| 2015 | 3 |
| 2016 | 2 |
| 2017 | 7 |
| 2018 | 5 |
| 2019 | 3 |
| 2020 | 10 |
| 2021 | 11 |
| 2022 | 9 |
| 2023 | 9 |
| 2024 | 9 |
| 2025 | 10 |
| 2026 (part year) | 6 |
Papers on brain injury that mention the forced swim test fell from 11 in 2021 to 9 in 2022, then rose to 10 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 48 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.
Species
Tests mentioned alongside the forced swim test
Each bar is one test, with how many of the 48 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 6 (13%) mention no other test.
The 12 tests these papers mention most
Which papers count
A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the forced swim test 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 forced swim test, 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 brain injury that mention other tests
Papers on other disease models that mention the forced swim test
- Depression 1,822 papers
- Psychological stress 627 papers
- Anxiety 582 papers
- Cognitive impairment and dementia 171 papers
- Pain conditions 136 papers
- Substance use disorders 66 papers
- Diabetes 52 papers
- Parkinson disease 52 papers
- Sleep loss and sleep disorders 52 papers
- Stroke and brain ischemia 50 papers
- Alzheimer disease 48 papers
- Epilepsy and seizures 43 papers
- Post-traumatic stress 41 papers
- Obesity and high-fat diet 40 papers
- Schizophrenia and psychosis 33 papers
The page on the forced swim test 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). Forced swim test in brain injury research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/brain-injury/forced-swim-test
BibTeX
@misc{conductscience_brain_injury_forced_swim_test_2026,
author = {{ConductScience}},
title = {Forced swim test in brain injury research},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/brain-injury/forced-swim-test},
note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}Forced swim test apparatus in our store
In the test battery tool, pick every test your study will run and add the apparatus for all of them to one quote.
