A new automated device for quantifying mechanical nociceptive responses

Abstract Background Traditional methods to assess pain in rodents depend on measures of nociceptive responses, most commonly from the hind paws. While these measures can quantify nociceptive responses to allow pharmacologic testing, they typically have high inter-experimenter variability and are not time-sensitive enough to correct with neural processes that occur on millisecond scales. New Method We have invented a pain detection device that uses changes in skin conductance to measure nocifensive withdrawal responses. This device automatically records how long it takes for a rodent to withdraw its paw from the onset of peripheral noxious stimulation. Results With this pain device, we can record accurate timing (on the millisecond scale) for nociceptive responses, with high accuracy and consistency. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this device can allow us to distinguish the nociceptive response to mechanical noxious stimuli of different intensities. Finally, we demonstrate that this device can be digitally integrated to correlate behavior with neural activities in real-time. Conclusions This study demonstrates a new automated, temporally specific method for quantifying nociceptive responses to facilitate pain studies.