Research data · Reward and motivation
Operant conditioning
From 2021 to 2025, 945 animal research papers mentioned operant conditioning in their title or abstract, ranking it 18th of the 90 tests we track.
That is 24% fewer than the 1,247 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests rose 22% over the same span.
Papers by year
Animal research papers that mention operant conditioning, 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 | 152 |
| 2002 | 162 |
| 2003 | 176 |
| 2004 | 184 |
| 2005 | 206 |
| 2006 | 198 |
| 2007 | 224 |
| 2008 | 214 |
| 2009 | 242 |
| 2010 | 227 |
| 2011 | 243 |
| 2012 | 258 |
| 2013 | 239 |
| 2014 | 266 |
| 2015 | 241 |
| 2016 | 255 |
| 2017 | 241 |
| 2018 | 243 |
| 2019 | 236 |
| 2020 | 239 |
| 2021 | 209 |
| 2022 | 196 |
| 2023 | 183 |
| 2024 | 183 |
| 2025 | 174 |
| 2026 (part year) | 184 |
Rats led mice every year from 2001 to 2025.
Papers that mention operant conditioning in mice and in rats, by year, 2001 to 2025
- Mouse
- Rat
Show the counts for each year and species
| Year | Mouse | Rat |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 18 | 113 |
| 2002 | 18 | 111 |
| 2003 | 11 | 126 |
| 2004 | 28 | 116 |
| 2005 | 30 | 145 |
| 2006 | 30 | 131 |
| 2007 | 37 | 154 |
| 2008 | 34 | 148 |
| 2009 | 41 | 151 |
| 2010 | 38 | 151 |
| 2011 | 39 | 165 |
| 2012 | 52 | 162 |
| 2013 | 40 | 163 |
| 2014 | 43 | 188 |
| 2015 | 41 | 167 |
| 2016 | 56 | 166 |
| 2017 | 54 | 160 |
| 2018 | 54 | 146 |
| 2019 | 67 | 138 |
| 2020 | 58 | 145 |
| 2021 | 63 | 129 |
| 2022 | 67 | 97 |
| 2023 | 68 | 94 |
| 2024 | 59 | 92 |
| 2025 | 50 | 104 |
Which species the papers used
Each bar is a share of the 945 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.
Strains and genetic lines
Strain names come from the MeSH terms PubMed adds when it indexes a paper. PubMed has indexed 807 of the 945 papers, so each bar is a share of those 807.
A paper indexed under two of these headings, such as knockout mice and a strain, counts under both.
Disease models these papers study
Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention operant conditioning and study that disease model, with its share of the 945 papers. The model comes from a paper's MeSH terms. For a paper PubMed has not indexed, it comes from PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, when that service finds the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one model.
Papers from 2021 to 2025 by disease model
Tests mentioned alongside operant conditioning
Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 945 papers that mention operant conditioning.
Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests
The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025
These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention operant conditioning and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026. We show four of the five most cited papers and leave out one because of words in its title.
BEHAVIORAL AND NEUROBIOLOGICAL MECHANISMS OF PAVLOVIAN AND INSTRUMENTAL EXTINCTION LEARNING.
Physiol Rev, 2021. 287 citations.
An amygdala-to-hypothalamus circuit for social reward.
Nat Neurosci, 2021. 139 citations.
An open-source device for measuring food intake and operant behavior in rodent home-cages.
Elife, 2021. 128 citations.
Fast odour dynamics are encoded in the olfactory system and guide behaviour.
Nature, 2021. 79 citations.
How we counted
A count is the number of animal research papers whose title or abstract mentions one of the test's search terms. It is not a count of experiments, labs or animals.
A paper that mentions operant conditioning only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 28 reviews. For 138 of the 945 papers, PubMed's indexing gave no species, so the species came from PubTator 3 finding one in the title or abstract.
The test's search terms are in the test list download. The full method, with each source and its terms of use, is on our main page, Behavioral tests in published research.
More reward and motivation tests
These reward and motivation tests also have a page, with their papers from 2021 to 2025. Each test with 30 or more papers gets one.
How to cite
APA
ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Operant conditioning in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/operant-conditioning
BibTeX
@misc{conductscience_operant_conditioning_2026,
author = {{ConductScience}},
title = {Operant conditioning in published research},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/operant-conditioning},
note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}Apparatus for operant conditioning
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