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Morris water maze in pain conditions research

From 2021 to 2025, 45 animal research papers on pain conditions mentioned the Morris water maze in their title or abstract.

That is 2.4 times the 19 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on pain conditions that mention any of the 90 tests we count grew more slowly, to 1.1 times as many.

45 papers on pain conditions from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the Morris water maze
2% of the papers on pain conditions that mention any test mention the Morris water maze
1% of the papers that mention the Morris water maze are on pain conditions
2.4 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on pain conditions that mention the Morris water 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
20010
20020
20031
20040
20052
20060
20072
20081
20092
20103
20111
20122
20135
20144
20157
20169
20177
20183
20193
20206
202112
202211
20238
20244
202510
2026 (part year)5

Papers on pain conditions that mention the Morris water maze fell from 12 in 2021 to 4 in 2024, 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 45 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Rat
28 papers 62%
Mouse
18 papers 40%

Tests mentioned alongside the Morris water maze

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 45 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 15 (33%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

13 papers 29%
8 papers 18%
6 papers 13%
5 papers 11%
5 papers 11%
3 papers 7%
2 papers 4%
2 papers 4%
1 paper 2%

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the Morris water maze in its title or abstract, and studies pain conditions.

We tell whether a paper studies pain conditions 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 pain conditions research names the subject headings we count as pain conditions. Download the test list for the search terms we used for the Morris water 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 Morris water maze counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on pain conditions research ranks the tests by their papers on pain conditions.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Morris water maze in pain conditions research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/pain/morris-water-maze

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_pain_morris_water_maze_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Morris water maze in pain conditions research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/pain/morris-water-maze},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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