Transcript
Can you tell which of these mice are in pain? A, B, or C. Comment your answer, and I'll show you how to tell. In my recent migraine video, I showed research that they did in mice, which prompted some of you to ask how that's even possible to test headaches in mice. All right, sir, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is your pain? 11! If only. Rodent research is super important because it is hard to get new humans when we break that. So, for every particular condition being studied, scientists have to figure out how to induce type of pain in a mouse. And then for all of them, they have to gauge how much pain the mouse is in. So in humans, migraines typically come with elevated levels of a peptide called CGRP, which dilates the blood vessels, activates an inflammatory immune response, and a lot more. In this study, they reproduced this in mice by injecting them with nitroglycerin, which causes their body to release even more CGRP. Then they evaluated their pain levels in two ways, behavior and facial expression. First, most migraine sufferers don't like bright lights, and it turns out that mice When they gave them free access to a light and a dark room, the mice who had been injected with nitroglycerin chose to spend most of their time in the dark room. But maybe it just made them vampires. So they also took detailed videos of the mice and analyzed their faces frame by frame using something called the mouse grimace scale. Developed by Canadian researchers back in 2011. When mice are in pain, their eyes tighten up, their noses bulge, their cheeks bulge, their ears pull back and flatten, and their whiskers pull either backwards or forwards, but So the researchers have to pour through all these video frames and rate each of these five categories on a scale of zero to two, and then average the results. It may seem mean, but this method allows us to test treatments for pain that can help millions of people. And Mouse C was in pain. Who got it right?
Additional notes
Replying to @nynetries Who got it right? Is it sad that we still have to do research on animals? Yes. But until we get to the point of being able to 100% digitally emulate complex biological systems, it's unfortunately going to have to be a thing (if we want to still make progress in the field of medicine). Here's a great use of AI: there are some systems that have been developed and are being improved upon that will completely automate the process of characterizing mouse behavior and facial expressions. Grad students everywhere shall rejoice! Studies Referenced: DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1455 DOI: 10.1172/JCI175616 #science #stem #migraines #edutok
References
- Study title not listed in workbook. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1455. Source: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1455
- Study title not listed in workbook. DOI: 10.1172/JCI175616. Source: https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI175616