Research data ยท Social behavior

Three-chamber sociability test

From 2021 to 2025, 339 animal research papers mentioned the three-chamber sociability test in their title or abstract, ranking it 32nd of the 90 tests we track.

That is 4.8 times the 71 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests grew to 1.2 times as many over the same span.

339 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test
4.8 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015
32nd of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025
63% of these papers used mice and 35% used rats

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention the three-chamber sociability 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
Papers by year
YearPapers
20010
20020
20030
20042
20050
20062
20073
20081
20095
20105
20119
201215
201316
201413
201518
201625
201726
201835
201954
202049
202161
202269
202351
202465
202593
2026 (part year)85

Papers that mention the three-chamber sociability test fell from 61 in 2021 to 51 in 2023, then rose to 93 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 species from PubMed's indexing whenever it names one, so part of this dip may come from the indexing rather than from fewer studies.

Papers that mention the three-chamber sociability test in mice and in rats, by year, 2001 to 2025

  • Mouse
  • Rat
Show the counts for each year and species
Papers by year, mice and rats
YearMouseRat
200100
200200
200300
200420
200500
200610
200730
200810
200950
201050
201190
2012140
2013143
2014112
2015126
2016188
2017232
20182510
2019449
20203812
20214615
20223826
20232919
20244521
20255439

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 339 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse
212 papers 63%
Rat
120 papers 35%
Other animals
6 papers 2%
Zebrafish
5 papers 1%
Nonhuman primate
2 papers 1%

โ€œOther animalsโ€ 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 256 of the 339 papers, so each bar is a share of those 256.

C57BL mice
75 papers 29%
Sprague-Dawley rats
33 papers 13%
Wistar rats
31 papers 12%
Knockout mice
28 papers 11%
Transgenic mice
9 papers 4%
Other inbred mice
6 papers 2%
BALB/c mice
4 papers 2%
ICR mice
3 papers 1%

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 the three-chamber sociability test and study that disease model, with its share of the 339 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

53 papers 16%
28 papers 8%
7 papers 2%
7 papers 2%

Tests mentioned alongside the three-chamber sociability test

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 339 papers that mention the three-chamber sociability test.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

71 papers 21%
69 papers 20%
39 papers 12%
37 papers 11%
27 papers 8%
22 papers 6%

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention the three-chamber sociability test and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026.

  1. NAc-VTA circuit underlies emotional stress-induced anxiety-like behavior in the three-chamber vicarious social defeat stress mouse model.

    Nat Commun, 2022. 127 citations.

  2. Beyond the three-chamber test: toward a multimodal and objective assessment of social behavior in rodents.

    Mol Autism, 2022. 99 citations.

  3. Oxytocin administration in neonates shapes hippocampal circuitry and restores social behavior in a mouse model of autism.

    Mol Psychiatry, 2021. 89 citations.

  4. Increased efficacy of combining prebiotic and postbiotic in mouse models relevant to autism and depression.

    Neuropharmacology, 2021. 58 citations.

  5. Dorsal raphe nucleus to anterior cingulate cortex 5-HTergic neural circuit modulates consolation and sociability.

    Elife, 2021. 57 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 the three-chamber sociability test only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 1 review. For 83 of the 339 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 social behavior tests

These social behavior 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). Three-chamber sociability test in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/three-chamber-sociability

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_three_chamber_sociability_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Three-chamber sociability test in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/three-chamber-sociability},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

Apparatus for the three-chamber sociability test

Our store sells two products for the three-chamber sociability test.

Shop the apparatus

Papers that name our apparatus

We keep our own list of published papers whose text names our equipment. Those that mention the three-chamber sociability test in the title or abstract are already in the counts above.

  • 11 papers from 2020 to 2026 name our Sociability Chamber. See the papers