Research data · Disease model and test

Morris water maze in psychological stress research

From 2021 to 2025, 93 animal research papers on psychological stress mentioned the Morris water maze in their title or abstract.

That is 10% fewer than the 103 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on psychological stress that mention any of the 90 tests we count fell 10%. The 2021 to 2025 count may run low because of a dip in PubMed's indexing, explained under the year chart.

93 papers on psychological stress from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the Morris water maze
6% of the papers on psychological stress that mention any test mention the Morris water maze
2% of the papers that mention the Morris water maze are on psychological stress
10% fewer papers than in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on psychological stress 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
20011
20026
20036
20049
200514
200615
200717
200823
200920
201017
201114
201214
201326
201420
201529
201622
201735
201819
201915
202018
202128
202212
202314
202418
202521
2026 (part year)20

Papers on psychological stress that mention the Morris water maze fell from 28 in 2021 to 12 in 2022, then rose to 21 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 93 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Rat
58 papers 62%
Mouse
36 papers 39%
Other animals
1 paper 1%

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

Tests mentioned alongside the Morris water maze

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 93 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 13 (14%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

34 papers 37%
30 papers 32%
24 papers 26%
14 papers 15%
7 papers 8%
5 papers 5%
3 papers 3%

Which papers count

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

We tell whether a paper studies psychological stress 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 psychological stress research names the subject headings we count as psychological stress. 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 psychological stress research ranks the tests by their papers on psychological stress.

How to cite

APA

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

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_stress_morris_water_maze_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Morris water maze in psychological stress research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/stress/morris-water-maze},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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