Research data · Disease model and test

Elevated plus maze in cognitive impairment and dementia research

From 2021 to 2025, 394 animal research papers on cognitive impairment and dementia mentioned the elevated plus maze in their title or abstract.

That is 1.7 times the 233 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on cognitive impairment and dementia that mention any of the 90 tests we count grew about as fast, to 1.7 times as many.

394 papers on cognitive impairment and dementia from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the elevated plus maze
8% of the papers on cognitive impairment and dementia that mention any test mention the elevated plus maze
14% of the papers that mention the elevated plus maze are on cognitive impairment and dementia
1.7 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on cognitive impairment and dementia that mention the elevated plus 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
20019
200211
200314
20049
20058
200612
200713
200822
200925
201028
201142
201243
201353
201451
201544
201660
201766
201864
201965
202053
202174
202282
202372
202481
202585
2026 (part year)85

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 394 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Rat
213 papers 54%
Mouse
181 papers 46%
Other animals
2 papers 1%
Zebrafish
1 paper under 1%

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

Tests mentioned alongside the elevated plus maze

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 394 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 28 (7%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

156 papers 40%
104 papers 26%
77 papers 20%
62 papers 16%
50 papers 13%
30 papers 8%
19 papers 5%
16 papers 4%
11 papers 3%

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the elevated plus maze in its title or abstract, and studies cognitive impairment and dementia.

We tell whether a paper studies cognitive impairment and dementia 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 cognitive impairment and dementia research names the subject headings we count as cognitive impairment and dementia. Download the test list for the search terms we used for the elevated plus 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.

The page on the elevated plus maze counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on cognitive impairment and dementia research ranks the tests by their papers on cognitive impairment and dementia.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Elevated plus maze in cognitive impairment and dementia research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/cognitive-impairment/elevated-plus-maze

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_cognitive_impairment_elevated_plus_maze_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Elevated plus maze in cognitive impairment and dementia research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/cognitive-impairment/elevated-plus-maze},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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