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.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Darwin, C. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Albemarle, 1872).
Williams, A.C. Behav. Brain Sci. 25, 439–455 (2002).
Craig, K.D. Can. Psychol. 50, 22–32 (2009).
Ekman, P. & Friesen, W. Facial Action Coding System (Consulting Psychologists Press, 1978).
Grill, H.J. & Norgren, R. Brain Res. 143, 263–279 (1978).
Mogil, J.S. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 10, 283–294 (2009).
Prkachin, K.M. Pain 51, 297–306 (1992).
Strigo, I.A., Bushnell, M.C., Boivin, M. & Duncan, G.H. Pain 97, 235–246 (2002).
Gao, Y.J., Ren, W.H., Zhang, Y.Q. & Zhao, Z.Q. Pain 110, 343–353 (2004).
Schweinhardt, P. et al. Neuroimage 32, 256–265 (2006).
Berthier, M., Starkstein, S. & Leiguarda, R. Cortex 23, 673–678 (1987).
Susskind, J.M. et al. Nat. Neurosci. 11, 843–850 (2008).
van den Maagdenberg, A.M.J.M. et al. Neuron 41, 701–710 (2004).
Langford, D.J. et al. Science 312, 1967–1970 (2006).
Langford, D.J. et al. Soc. Neurosci. (in the press).
Shrout, P.E. & Fleiss, J.L. Psychol. Bull. 86, 420–428 (1979).
Mogil, J.S. et al. Pain 80, 67–82 (1999).
Mogil, J.S. et al. Pain 126, 24–34 (2006).
Bennett, G.J. & Xie, Y.-K. Pain 33, 87–107 (1988).
Bon, K., Lichtensteiger, C.A., Wilson, S.G. & Mogil, J.S. J. Urol. 170, 1008–1012 (2003).
Pogatzki, E.M. & Raja, S.N. Anesthesiology 99, 1023–1027 (2003).
Brennan, T.J., Vandermeulen, E.P. & Gebhart, G.F. Pain 64, 493–501 (1996).
Shields, S.D., Eckert, W.A. III & Basbaum, A.I. J. Pain 4, 465–470 (2003).
Decosterd, I. & Woolf, C.J. Pain 87, 149–158 (2000).
Franklin, K.B. & Paxinos, A. The Mouse Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, 2nd ed. (Academic Press, 2003).
Chaplan, S.R., Bach, F.W., Pogrel, J.W., Chung, J.M. & Yaksh, T.L. J. Neurosci. Methods 53, 55–63 (1994).
Dickinson, A.L., Leach, M.C. & Flecknell, P.A. Lab. Anim. 43, 357–361 (2009).
Wilson, S.G. et al. J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther. 305, 755–764 (2003).
Ophoff, R.A. et al. Cell 87, 543–552 (1996).
Tottene, A. et al. Neuron 61, 762–773 (2009).
Goadsby, P.J., Lipton, R.B. & Ferrari, M.D. N. Engl. J. Med. 346, 257–270 (2002).
Xue, M. & Rosenmund, C. Neuron 61, 653–654 (2009).
Benjamini, Y. & Hochberg, Y. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B. 57, 289–300 (1995).
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.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
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
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Text and Figures
Supplementary Figures 1–3 (PDF 190 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1455