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Reply To "Do 'smart' mice feel more pain, or are they just better learners?"

Nature Neuroscience volume 4, pages 453–454 (2001)Cite this article

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Something more than cleverness caused forebrain-targeted NR2B overexpressing mice to respond so robustly to inflammatory stimuli1. Tang et al. rightly indicate that transgenic and wild-type mice were no different in tests of acute pain. However, they fail to recognize the significance of a selective enhancement of inflammatory pain in the transgenics. Acute pain relies on intact reflex circuitry, whereas inflammatory pain-induced behavioral responses involve NMDA receptor-mediated synaptic plasticity in central modulatory pathways (for review, see ref. 4). In the latter category, formalin and CFA tests are widely used (for example, see refs. 5–7).

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Figure 1: Mice showed stable behavioral responses in a hot plate.

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  1. Departments of Anesthesiology, Anatomy & Neurobiology, Psychiatry, and Molecular Biology and Pharmacology, Washington University Pain Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, 63110, Missouri, USA

    Geoffrey A. Kerchner, Feng Wei, Guo-Du Wang, Susan J. Kim, Hai-Ming Xu, Daphné A. Robinson, Ping Li, Zhou-Feng Chen & Min Zhuo

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Kerchner, G., Wei, F., Wang, GD. et al. Reply To "Do 'smart' mice feel more pain, or are they just better learners?". Nat Neurosci 4, 453–454 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/87396

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