Research data · Working memory

Y-maze

Name: Y-maze in published research
Creator: ConductScience
Published: 2026-11-10

From 2021 to 2025, 1,988 animal research papers mentioned the Y-maze in their title or abstract, ranking it eighth of the 90 tests we track.

That is 2.9 times the 684 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests grew to 1.2 times as many over the same span.

Shop the apparatus See all 90 tests

1,988 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test

2.9 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

8th of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025

64% of these papers used mice and 32% used rats

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention the Y-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
Year	Papers
2001	40
2002	35
2003	36
2004	44
2005	37
2006	60
2007	62
2008	70
2009	79
2010	81
2011	96
2012	119
2013	140
2014	171
2015	158
2016	157
2017	202
2018	237
2019	273
2020	290
2021	340
2022	350
2023	358
2024	404
2025	536
2026 (part year)	534

Papers that mention the Y-maze in mice and in rats, by year, 2001 to 2025

Mouse
Rat

Mouse Rat

Show the counts for each year and species

Papers by year, mice and rats
Year	Mouse	Rat
2001	17	21
2002	16	17
2003	12	22
2004	15	21
2005	16	19
2006	32	24
2007	26	30
2008	34	31
2009	42	30
2010	41	26
2011	52	40
2012	65	42
2013	84	60
2014	96	66
2015	84	56
2016	97	60
2017	129	65
2018	161	76
2019	174	90
2020	181	96
2021	195	126
2022	219	121
2023	240	115
2024	253	135
2025	362	147

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 1,988 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse

1,269 64%

Rat

644 32%

Other animals

61 3%

Zebrafish

49 2%

Fruit fly

8 under 1%

“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 1,550 of the 1,988 papers, so each bar is a share of those 1,550.

C57BL mice

422 27%

Wistar rats

203 13%

Transgenic mice

176 11%

Sprague-Dawley rats

129 8%

Knockout mice

41 3%

ICR mice

20 1%

BALB/c mice

16 1%

Spontaneously hypertensive rats

13 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 Y-maze and study that disease model, with its share of the 1,988 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

Cognitive impairment and dementia

961 48%

471 24%

171 9%

86 4%

77 4%

Stroke and brain ischemia

75 4%

Diabetes

71 4%

Brain injury

57 3%

Obesity and high-fat diet

56 3%

Epilepsy and seizures

53 3%

Tests mentioned alongside the Y-maze

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 1,988 papers that mention the Y-maze.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

Novel object recognition

609 31%

607 31%

285 14%

239 12%

176 9%

98 5%

96 5%

96 5%

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

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

Exosomes derived from bone-marrow mesenchymal stem cells alleviate cognitive decline in AD-like mice by improving BDNF-related neuropathology.
J Neuroinflammation, 2022. 271 citations.
Rutin prevents tau pathology and neuroinflammation in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.
J Neuroinflammation, 2021. 207 citations.
Salidroside attenuates neuronal ferroptosis by activating the Nrf2/HO1 signaling pathway in Aβ1-42-induced Alzheimer's disease mice and glutamate-injured HT22 cells.
Chin Med, 2022. 128 citations.
Outer membrane vesicles of Porphyromonas gingivalis trigger NLRP3 inflammasome and induce neuroinflammation, tau phosphorylation, and memory dysfunction in mice.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol, 2022. 120 citations.
HMGB1 mediates synaptic loss and cognitive impairment in an animal model of sepsis-associated encephalopathy.
J Neuroinflammation, 2023. 119 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 Y-maze only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 19 reviews. For 439 of the 1,988 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 working memory tests

These working memory tests also have a page, with their papers from 2021 to 2025. Each test with 30 or more papers gets one.

T-maze 436

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Y-maze in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/y-maze

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_y_maze_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Y-maze in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/y-maze},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

Apparatus for the Y-maze

Our store sells three products for the Y-maze.

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Papers that name our apparatus

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

34 papers from 2019 to 2026 name our Y Maze. See the papers