Research data · Animal model and test

Forced swim test with maternal separation and early-life stress

From 2021 to 2025, 91 animal research papers mentioned maternal separation and early-life stress and the forced swim test in their title or abstract.

That is 1.7 times the 53 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers that mention maternal separation and early-life stress and any of the 90 tests we count grew more slowly, to 1.6 times as many.

91 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned maternal separation and early-life stress and the forced swim test
27% of the 343 papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention maternal separation and early-life stress and a test mention the forced swim test
3% of the 2,988 papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention the forced swim test also mention maternal separation and early-life stress
1.7 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention maternal separation and early-life stress and the forced swim 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
20031
20042
20053
20065
20075
20082
20098
20108
201115
20129
201310
20148
201511
201616
201713
201819
201914
202019
202129
202221
202313
202412
202516
2026 (part year)18

Papers that mention maternal separation and early-life stress and the forced swim test fell from 29 in 2021 to 12 in 2024, then rose to 16 in 2025. Part of this dip may come from PubMed's indexing rather than from fewer studies. We take a paper's species from PubMed's indexing when the indexing names one. Otherwise PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find a species in the title or abstract, or the paper is not counted. 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 91 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 64%
Mouse
31 papers 34%
Zebrafish
1 paper 1%
Other animals
1 paper 1%

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

Tests mentioned alongside the forced swim test

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 91 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 20 (22%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research and its title or abstract mentions maternal separation and early-life stress and the forced swim test.

A paper that mentions either only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The search terms are in the list of models and techniques and the test list. The full method, with each source and its terms of use, is on our main page, Behavioral tests in published research.

More pairings

Every pairing of an animal model and a test with 30 or more papers from 2021 to 2025 has a page like this one.

Other tests with maternal separation and early-life stress

The page on the forced swim test counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on maternal separation and early-life stress ranks the tests mentioned with it.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 13). Forced swim test with maternal separation and early-life stress [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/resources/data/animal-models/maternal-separation/forced-swim-test

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_maternal_separation_forced_swim_test_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Forced swim test with maternal separation and early-life stress},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/resources/data/animal-models/maternal-separation/forced-swim-test},
  note = {Data set, released November 13, 2026},
}

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