Cats suffering from arthritis carry caps in revolutionary research to understand and relieve their pain

Cats wear hats for science – as researchers use brain scanners to understand pain in arthritis felines and find a way to appease it.

It is a first world for veterinary scientists from the University of Montreal (UdeM): they found a way to scan the brain of cats while they are always awake, using hidden electrodes under specially woolen caps knitted.

Chronic pain associated with osteoarthritis affects more than 25% of the feline adult population and this incidence increases with age.

Seeking to understand how cats experience chronic pain, the researchers wanted to create a non -invasive method to study their brain.

In previous studies, the CAT subjects shook and chewed the threads of traditional electrodes. The answer was to incorporate the sensors into comfortable hook caps.

“We had the idea of ​​the small knitted hat that would maintain the electrodes in place,” said Aude Castel, assistant professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of UdeM in the Department of Clinical Sciences.

The team wanted to use sensory stimulation to try to reduce evils, exposing cats to soothing stimuli such as colorful lights and comforting odors, such as a means of relieving their suffering.

“With a few treats and a positive strengthening, cats have tolerated the hat very well and allowed us to record their brain activity when awake and be exposed to different types of sensory stimuli: citrus smell, different Bright colors.

In total, they studied 11 adult cats with osteoarthritis, evaluating their stress and pain using electrodes that produced electroencephalograms (EEG).

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“The reasoning behind the exposing to different stimulation is that we wanted to see if, as in people, we could modulate their brain activity and, in the same way, their perception of pain, with sensory stimulation.”

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, revealed that the hat method is possible and that spectral analysis is effective methods to characterize the response to a given sensory stimulation.

“This opens up new ways to study chronic pain mechanisms and developing new therapeutic strategies,” concluded the report.

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“We now plan to obtain funding from the CRSNC (Research Council in Natural Sciences and Engineering of Canada), in partnership with private companies, to allow us to establish a real EEG signature for chronic pain, and many Other applications that will allow us to automate chronic detection pain in the future, ”said Éric Troncy, who co-directed the study.

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