Cats are wearing hats for science—as researchers use brain scans to understand pain in arthritic felines, and find a way to soothe it.
It’s a world first for veterinary scientists at the University of Montreal (UdeM): they found a way to scan the brains of cats while they’re still awake, using electrodes concealed under specially-knitted wool caps.
Chronic pain associated with osteoarthritis affects over 25 % of the adult feline population and this incidence increases with age.
Seeking to understand how cats experience the chronic pain, the researchers wanted to create a non-invasive method to study their brains.
In previous studies, the cat subjects would shake off and chew the wires of traditional electrodes. The answer was to incorporate the sensors into comfy crocheted beanies.
“We had the idea of the little knitted hat that would keep the electrodes in place,” said Aude Castel, Assistant Professor at UdeM Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in the Department of Clinical Sciences.
The team wanted to use sensory stimulation to try to reduce the aches, exposing the cats to soothing stimuli such as colored lights and comforting smells, as a way to ease their suffering.
“With some treats and positive reinforcement, the cats tolerated the hat very well and allowed us to record their brain activity while awake and being exposed to different types of sensory stimuli: citrus smell, different light colors.
In all, they studied 11 adult cats with osteoarthritis, assessing their stress and pain using the electrodes that produced electroencephalograms (EEGs).
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“The reasoning behind exposing them to different stimulations is that we wanted to see if, just like in people, we could modulate their brain activity and, by the same token their pain perception, with sensory stimulation.”
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, found that the hat method is feasible, and spectral analysis are efficient methods to characterize the response to a given sensory stimulation.
“This opens new avenues for investigating chronic pain mechanisms and developing novel therapeutic strategies,” the report concluded.
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“We now plan to obtain NSERC funding [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada], in partnership with private companies, to enable us to establish a genuine EEG signature for chronic pain, and many other applications that will enable us to automate chronic pain detection in the future,” said Éric Troncy, who co-led the study.
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