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The Preclinical Behavior Core provides consultation and services for evaluating pain and cognitive behaviors in rodent models. Services include assesssing and measuring behavior, sensitivity to temperature, mechanical and thermal sensitivity, spontaneous and ongoing pain, cognition, sensorimotor function, activity, affect, and motivation.

Click on each service listed below to learn more.

For additional information about any of our services, contact us at PBResearchCore@mdanderson.org.

• Purpose: Evaluate motor coordination, balance, and sensory and proprioceptive sensitivity.
• Procedure: Mice traverse a series of elevated beams of increasing difficulty.
• Outcome measures: Latency to cross and number of slips, inversions, and falls.

• Purpose: Evaluate dynamic allodynia, a correlate of mechanical pain.
• Procedure: Mice are placed on a wire mesh; the plantar surface of the hindpaw is brushed from heel to toe with a soft paintbrush.
• Outcome measure: Average scored response (0=very brief paw lifting; 1=sustained paw lifting; 2=strong lateral lifting; 3=flinching/licking the paw).

Image:  (bottom).

• Purpose: Evaluate motivation to engage in burrowing activity, a voluntary, pain-depressed behavior; correlate of an activity of daily living.
• Procedure: Mice are singly-housed in a cage with a close-ended cylinder filled with bedding material.
• Outcome measure: The percentage of bedding material displaced from the tube within a predetermined timeframe (usually 15 minutes).

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• Purpose: Evaluate paw placement and gait parameters during voluntary locomotion; detects deficits due to peripheral nerve injury and CNS damage or dysfunction.
• Procedure: Mice traverse a glass platform; glass contact is detected by scattering of internally-reflected green light. Paw placement parameters captured by high-speed ventral plane videography and analyzed using proprietary Noldus Catwalk software.
• Outcome measures: Paw stand/swing time; measures of acceleration, propulsive force, and speed; measures of gait regularity. 

Image: Gaffney CM (unpublished).

• Purpose: Evaluate the rewarding effects of drugs; a correlate of abuse liability or relief of ongoing pain, depending on the assay mode chosen.
• Procedure: Mice receive test article paired with a particular chamber (the conditioning stimulus).
• Outcome measure: Time spent in the conditioned chamber when allowed to explore freely, reflecting either inherent rewarding effects (e.g. drugs of abuse, such as morphine) or relief of ongoing pain.

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• Purpose: Evaluate depression, behavioral despair, and learned helplessness by monitoring immobility behavior.
• Procedure: Mice typically complete a 6-minute swim exposure; the first 2 minutes serve as a pre-test, and the last 4 minutes are considered the actual test.
• Outcome measures: Percentage of time spent immobile (floating) or total time at rest, time spent swimming (generally including climbing and diving actions), and latency to become immobile.

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• Purpopse: Evaluate sensitivity to radiant heat, a correlate of thermal hypersensitivity.
• Procedure: Mice are placed on a glass platform; the plantar surface of the hindpaw is stimulated by using a focused beam of light that creates a temperature ramp.
• Outcome measure: Paw withdrawal latency (in seconds), calculated from the average of two test runs per hindpaw; inflammatory pain (e.g., induced by Complete Freund¡¯s Adjuvant) causes sustained heat hypersensitivity.

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• Purpose: Evaluate sensitivity to evaporative cooling, a correlate of cold allodynia.
• Procedure: Mice are placed on a wire mesh; the plantar surface of the hindpaw is stimulated with a drop of acetone from a 1-mL syringe.
• Outcome measure: Time spent flicking or licking the paw, 10-70 seconds after application of the droplet, as described by Brenner DS et al. (2012).

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• Purpose: Evaluate a wide variety of spontaneous, in-cage behaviors without direct intervention.
• Procedure: Mice are placed housed individually in Noldus Phenotyper cages; movements are tracked using video cameras and Noldus Ethovision software.
• Outcome measures: Overall activity levels, in-cage open field testing, sleeping/activity, feeding/drinking behaviors, and more.

• Purpose: Evaluate perceived aversiveness of tactile stimuli, incorporating motivational and affective components.
• Procedure: Mice are placed in a brightly-lit (aversive) chamber; the latency in escaping across a floor of mechanical probes (height: 0, 2, or 5 mm) into the end chamber is recorded.
• Outcome measure: Escape latency (in seconds), calcluated between baseline (BL) and a specified timepoint (e.g., 8 days); spared nerve injury (SNI) induces significant increase in escape latency.

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• Purpose: Evaluate motivation to engage in a motor task, a pain-depressed behavior; correlate of an activity of daily living.
• Procedure: Mice are singly-housed in a cage with a single nestlet square.
• Outcome measure: The extent to which the nestlet is shredded over a predetermined interval (usually 3 hours).
   

• Purpose: Evaluate working and spatial memory; exploits innate preference for novelty.
• Procedure: Two identical objects are placed on the same side of an arena. In the training phase, the mouse is placed in the arena for a specified length of time (e.g., 5 min) and then returned to its home cage.
  • 30 min later, the mouse is returned to the arena with the familiar objects in the same location and a novel object placed on the opposite side of the arena; the mouse's position  is recorded for 5 min.
  • Interaction with the novel vs the familiar object, defined as the nose point being ¡Ü1 cm from the object; tracked by using Noldus EthoVision XT video tracking software.
• Outcome measure: Discrimination index: (T_novel - T_familiar) / (T_novel + T_familiar)

Image: (top); (bottom).

• Purpose: Evaluate cold hypersensitivity, a common feature of neuropathic pain.
• Procedure: Mice are placed on a glass plate; the plantar surface of the hindpaw is cooled through the glass by using powdered dry ice.
• Outcome measure: Paw withdrawal latency (in seconds), calculated from average of two trials; spinal nerve ligation induces significant reductions in withdrawal latency, indicative of cold hypersensitivity.

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• Purpose: Evaluate executive functioning, exploits innate aversion to brightly-lit environments.
• Procedure: Mice are placed into a bright compartment, linked to a dark compartment via an underpass.
  • ¡®Easy¡¯ level (trials 1-3, day 1; trial 4, day 2): underpass open.
  • ¡®Intermediate¡¯ level (trials 5 and 6, day 2; trial 7, day 3): underpass covered with bedding.
  • ¡®Difficult¡¯ level (trials 8 and 9, day 3; trials 10 and 11, day 4): underpass covered with same-color lid.
• Outcome measure: Time to enter dark compartment.

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• Purpose: Evaluate motor coordination, balance.
• Procedure: Mice are placed on a 30-mm diameter rotating cylinder at constant speed or under acceleration, requiring the mouse to continue walking forward to avoid falling off.
• Outcome measure: Time spent on the rod, averaged across several trials.

Image: (bottom).

• Purpose: Simultaneously evaluate disruptions or shifts in temperature preference and aversion to warm or cool temperatures.
• Procedure: Mice are placed in an arena with a temperature-controlled floor; their location is recorded.
• Outcome measure: Time spent in each temperature zone, compared  with control mice.

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