Forced Swim Test
Objective: Assessment of depression-like behavior through measurement of swimming and immobility in mice
This is a Forced Swim Test protocol using mouse as the model organism. The procedure involves 3 procedural steps, 1 equipment items, 2 materials. Extracted from a 2016 paper published in Molecular Psychiatry.
Model and subjects
mouse • C57BL/6J background • male • 60-90 days • not specified • 101
Study window
~30 minutes hands-on
Core workflow
Animal acclimation to testing room • Test sequence ordering • Conduct forced swim test
Primary readouts
- Swimming behavior
- Immobility duration
- Depression-like behavior indicators
Key equipment and reagents
Use this page as an execution guide, then fall back to the source paper whenever you need exact exclusions, dosing details, or assay-specific caveats.
Confirm first
- Verify the animal model, intervention setup, and collection timepoints against the source paper.
- Check that every direct vendor link matches the exact specification your lab plans to run.
Use the page like this
- Work through the protocol steps in order and use the inline vendor chips only when you need to source or verify an item.
- Jump to Experimental Context for readouts, data shape, and analysis flow before planning downstream analysis.
Protocol Steps
Start here. The step list is optimized for running the experiment, with direct vendor links available inline when you need to source a cited item.
Animal acclimation to testing room
Animals were given habituation time to the behavioral testing room before testing commenced
Note: Behavioral phenotyping was performed between 0900h and 1600h
View evidence from paper
“Animals were given 30 min of habituation to the behavioral testing room. Behavioral phenotyping was performed between 0900 h and 1600 h.”
Test sequence ordering
Tests were performed in a specific order from least to most invasive to minimize influence of prior test history. For baseline testing: rotarod, elevated plus maze, marble burying test, open field test, sucrose preference test, novelty suppressed feeding, and forced swim test. After chronic restraint stress, this order was reversed for bell-shaped stress exposure.
Note: Forced swim test was the final test in baseline sequence
View evidence from paper
“Tests were performed from the least to the most invasive to minimize the influence of prior test history (in order: rotarod, elevated plus maze, marble burying test, open field test, sucrose preference test, novelty suppressed feeding and forced swim test”
Conduct forced swim test
Perform forced swim test on mice to assess depression-like behavior through measurement of swimming and immobility
Note: Specific parameters of the forced swim test (water temperature, tank dimensions, duration, etc.) are referenced as being in Supplementary Materials and Methods
View evidence from paper
“forced swim test; see Supplementary Materials and Methods for details”