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| Test | Protocol | Parameters | Meaning | References |
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| Depression | | | | | |
| Anhedonia | Sucrose consumption/intake | Animals can choose to drink water or 1% sucrose. | Amount of sucrose consumed and preference for water/sucrose | The anhedonic phenotype is characterized by a reduction of sucrose intake/preference. | [25, 26, 64, 99, 100, 102, 103, 119, 123] |
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| Despair | Forced swimming test (FST) | Animals are put in a vessel filled with water. | Latency to floating, swimming time | Despair behavior is associated with shorter latency to float and with less swimming time. | [27, 55, 56, 64, 72, 87, 100–103, 105, 106, 123, 126, 130, 140] |
| Tail suspension test (TST) | Animals are suspended by the tail. | Immobility time | Despair is correlated with an increase in the immobility time. | [27, 64, 100, 101, 105, 130] |
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| Anxiety | Open field (OF) test | Animals are free to explore an empty arena. | Time of exploration and number of rearing | Anxiety behavior is correlated with a reduction of exploration and rearing. | [25, 26, 40, 63, 73, 74, 79, 100, 101, 118, 139, 140] |
| Shuttle box escape test | Animal can avoid an electric shock by running in the other room of the apparatus. | Number of escapes | Anxiety is characterized by the increased number of escape failures. | [25, 27] |
| Elevated plus maze | Animals are free to explore a maze with two open and two close arms. | Time spent in the open arms | The time spent in the open arms is inversely correlated with anxiety. | [73, 104, 106, 140] |
| Novelty-induced hyponeophagia (NIH) test | After 48 h food deprivation, animals are put into a cage containing food in the center. | Latency to feeding | Increase latency is associated with an anxious phenotype. | [99, 101] |
| Learned helplessness | Animals learn to associate an electric shock with a tone. | Freezing time | Time of freezing is directly correlated with anxiety. | [101] |
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| Cognition | Novel object recognition (NOR) test | Animals must discriminate between a novel (n) and a familiar (F) object. | Time exploring the two objects and NOR index (n − F)/(n + F) + 100 | To correctly perform it, the animals must spend more time exploring the novel object. Improvement of cognition is reflected by a higher NOR index, while worsening is reflected by a lower NOR index. | [29, 30, 40, 42, 43, 74, 78] |
| Y maze | Animals are put in a maze (Y-shaped), and they must recognize the novel arm (which is closed in the trial phase). | Time exploring the new arm | An increase in time exploring the new arm is an index of a correct cognitive performance. | [29, 78, 113] |
| Fear conditioning | Animals learn to associate a cue (context or tone) to an electric shock. | Freezing time when the cue is presented without a shock | Time of freezing is directly correlated with memory. | [29, 33, 77] |
| Morris water maze (MWM) | The animals learn to escape onto a hidden platform using this swimming-based model. | Time spent in the target quadrant (where the platform is). | Preserved spatial memory corresponds to increased time in the correct quadrant. | [30, 45, 76, 77, 80, 90, 109, 110, 118, 121, 135, 145] |
| Spontaneous alternation test | Animals are placed in the center of a four-arm maze and are free to explore. | Percentage of alternations in the entry of the different arms. | The spontaneous alternation is used as memory task. | [47, 90] |
| Radial arm water maze (RAWM) | Animals must find a submerged platform at the end of one of the six arms of the maze, aided by the fixed visually cues on the walls of the room. | Number of errors | Reduction of errors is related to a better cognitive performance. | [52, 91, 139] |
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