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Coding of facial expressions of pain in the laboratory mouse

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Abstract

Facial expression is widely used as a measure of pain in infants; whether nonhuman animals display such pain expressions has never been systematically assessed. We developed the mouse grimace scale (MGS), a standardized behavioral coding system with high accuracy and reliability; assays involving noxious stimuli of moderate duration are accompanied by facial expressions of pain. This measure of spontaneously emitted pain may provide insight into the subjective pain experience of mice.

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Figure 1: In the MGS, intensity of each feature is coded on a three-point scale.
Figure 2: Specificity of the MGS.
Figure 3: Validity and utility of the MGS.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Louise and Alan Edwards Foundation (J.S.M.). D.J.L. was supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarship doctoral award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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Authors

Contributions

D.J.L. and J.S.M. conceived the experiments, and D.J.L. and S.G.S. were primarily responsible for their execution. A.L.B., M.L.C., S.E.C., T.E.D., S.G., M.L.L.-F., L.M., R.E.S. and J.M.T. participated in data collection. S.E., J.I., T.K.-R., D.W. and K.D.C. were responsible for designing the scale. A.M.J.M.v.d.M. and M.D.F. provided transgenic knock-in mice and edited portions of the manuscript. J.S.M. and D.J.L. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeffrey S Mogil.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Langford, D., Bailey, A., Chanda, M. et al. Coding of facial expressions of pain in the laboratory mouse. Nat Methods 7, 447–449 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1455

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