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Elevated plus maze in autism spectrum disorder research

From 2021 to 2025, 64 animal research papers on autism spectrum disorder mentioned the elevated plus maze in their title or abstract.

That is 5.3 times the 12 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on autism spectrum disorder that mention any of the 90 tests we count grew more slowly, to 3.5 times as many.

64 papers on autism spectrum disorder from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the elevated plus maze
13% of the papers on autism spectrum disorder that mention any test mention the elevated plus maze
2% of the papers that mention the elevated plus maze are on autism spectrum disorder
5.3 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on autism spectrum disorder that mention the elevated plus 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
20010
20020
20030
20040
20050
20061
20072
20081
20093
20101
20113
20120
20130
20145
20154
201612
20174
20185
20196
20209
202114
202211
202316
20246
202517
2026 (part year)11

Papers on autism spectrum disorder that mention the elevated plus maze fell from 14 in 2021 to 6 in 2024, then rose to 17 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 64 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse
39 papers 61%
Rat
25 papers 39%

Tests mentioned alongside the elevated plus maze

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 64 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 10 (16%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

23 papers 36%
16 papers 25%
14 papers 22%
9 papers 14%
5 papers 8%
5 papers 8%
4 papers 6%
4 papers 6%

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the elevated plus maze in its title or abstract, and studies autism spectrum disorder.

We tell whether a paper studies autism spectrum disorder 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 autism spectrum disorder research names the subject headings we count as autism spectrum disorder. Download the test list for the search terms we used for the elevated plus 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 elevated plus maze counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on autism spectrum disorder research ranks the tests by their papers on autism spectrum disorder.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Elevated plus maze in autism spectrum disorder research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/resources/data/behavioral-tests/models/autism/elevated-plus-maze

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_autism_elevated_plus_maze_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Elevated plus maze in autism spectrum disorder research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/resources/data/behavioral-tests/models/autism/elevated-plus-maze},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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