Tests and models to study pain in animal-based translational research

Abstract

Nociceptive reflexes are predominant in traditional "pain" tests using rodents. However, pain is not a nociceptive reflex, but an unpleasant personal experience associated with a complex sensory, emotional and cognitive phenomenology. Modern research methods in behavioral neuroscience have now enabled preclinical pain researchers to develop procedures which differentially combine reflex and non-reflex based measures, thus making various aspects of pain experience experimentally accessible in rodents. These aspects include the aversive component, anxiodepressive and cognitive consequences of pain as well as pain empathy. Rodents are also highly sensitive to their environmental context, and can accordingly attribute different contextual meaning to different experimental situations. This chapter summarizes classically used nociceptive tests, but mainly focuses on the recent developments highlighting the possibility to address the complex experience of pain in rodents.