Research data · Disease model
Spinal cord injury
From 2021 to 2025, 382 animal research papers on spinal cord injury mentioned at least one behavioral test, most often gait analysis.
That is 1.3 times the 301 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests grew to 1.2 times as many over the same span.
The tests these papers mention
Gait analysis appears in 33% of the papers on spinal cord injury and in 2.5% of all 32,277 papers that mention a test. That makes it 13 times as common in this research. Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 on spinal cord injury that mention the test, with its share of the 382 papers. A paper that mentions two tests counts under both.
The 15 tests these papers mention most
All 36 tests these papers mention
| Test | Papers | Share of the 382 papers on spinal cord injury | Share of all 32,277 papers that mention a test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gait analysis | 127 | 33% | 3% |
| Treadmill running | 75 | 20% | 6% |
| Von Frey test | 48 | 13% | 4% |
| Open field | 41 | 11% | 12% |
| Ladder rung walking | 35 | 9% | under 1% |
| Grip strength | 21 | 5% | 4% |
| Grid walking (foot fault) | 19 | 5% | under 1% |
| Rotarod | 17 | 4% | 6% |
| Hargreaves plantar test | 15 | 4% | 1% |
| Skilled reaching | 13 | 3% | under 1% |
| Hot plate | 13 | 3% | 2% |
| Beam walking | 11 | 3% | 2% |
| Tail flick | 10 | 3% | 2% |
| Acetone test | 8 | 2% | under 1% |
| Wheel running | 8 | 2% | 3% |
| Forced swim test | 8 | 2% | 9% |
| Operant conditioning | 7 | 2% | 3% |
| Sucrose preference test | 5 | 1% | 5% |
| Novel object recognition | 5 | 1% | 9% |
| Adhesive removal test | 4 | 1% | under 1% |
| Self-grooming | 3 | 1% | 1% |
| Cylinder test | 3 | 1% | 1% |
| Conditioned place preference | 3 | 1% | 3% |
| Thermal gradient and temperature preference | 2 | 1% | under 1% |
| Cold plate | 2 | 1% | under 1% |
| Formalin test | 2 | 1% | 2% |
| Wire hang and inverted grid | 2 | 1% | 1% |
| Catalepsy bar test | 1 | under 1% | 1% |
| Prepulse inhibition and acoustic startle | 1 | under 1% | 2% |
| Light-dark box | 1 | under 1% | 2% |
| Writhing test | 1 | under 1% | 2% |
| Active avoidance (shuttle box) | 1 | under 1% | 1% |
| Tail suspension test | 1 | under 1% | 4% |
| Y-maze | 1 | under 1% | 6% |
| Morris water maze | 1 | under 1% | 17% |
| Elevated plus maze | 1 | under 1% | 9% |
Papers by year
Animal research papers on spinal cord injury that mention a behavioral 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 | 22 |
| 2002 | 20 |
| 2003 | 19 |
| 2004 | 32 |
| 2005 | 42 |
| 2006 | 36 |
| 2007 | 33 |
| 2008 | 43 |
| 2009 | 46 |
| 2010 | 52 |
| 2011 | 41 |
| 2012 | 54 |
| 2013 | 78 |
| 2014 | 70 |
| 2015 | 58 |
| 2016 | 62 |
| 2017 | 61 |
| 2018 | 67 |
| 2019 | 61 |
| 2020 | 64 |
| 2021 | 75 |
| 2022 | 61 |
| 2023 | 71 |
| 2024 | 64 |
| 2025 | 111 |
| 2026 (part year) | 88 |
Papers on spinal cord injury fell from 75 in 2021 to 61 in 2022, then rose to 111 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 disease models from PubMed's indexing whenever PubMed has indexed the paper, so part of this dip may come from the indexing rather than from fewer studies.
Which species the papers used
Each bar is a share of the 382 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.
Species
“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the other species in this chart.
Which papers count
A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions at least one of the 90 tests and studies spinal cord injury.
A paper counts under spinal cord injury when its MeSH terms, the subject headings PubMed adds when it indexes a paper, include this heading.
- Spinal Cord Injuries
For a paper PubMed has not indexed, PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, supplies the disease model when it finds the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one disease model.
Each paper and its disease models are in the downloads. The full method, with each source and its terms of use, is on our main page, Behavioral tests in published research.
More disease models
These disease models also have a page, with their papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention a test. Each disease model with 100 or more such papers gets one.
- Cognitive impairment and dementia 4,961
- Anxiety 3,041
- Depression 2,827
- Pain conditions 2,617
- Alzheimer disease 2,445
- Substance use disorders 1,599
- Psychological stress 1,484
- Stroke and brain ischemia 1,278
- Parkinson disease 918
- Brain injury 841
- Diabetes 795
- Obesity and high-fat diet 761
- Aging 700
- Epilepsy and seizures 572
- Autism spectrum disorder 484
- Schizophrenia and psychosis 401
- Sleep loss and sleep disorders 400
- Post-traumatic stress 392
- Multiple sclerosis and demyelination 223
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis 108
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder 107
How to cite
APA
ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Behavioral tests in spinal cord injury research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/spinal-cord-injury
BibTeX
@misc{conductscience_spinal_cord_injury_2026,
author = {{ConductScience}},
title = {Behavioral tests in spinal cord injury research},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/spinal-cord-injury},
note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}Shop apparatus by test
Our store sells apparatus for all the 10 tests these papers mention most.
- Gait analysis
- Treadmill running
- Von Frey test
- Open field
- Ladder rung walking
- Grip strength
- Grid walking (foot fault)
- Rotarod
- Hargreaves plantar test
- Skilled reaching
