# Inflammation and nerve injury minimally affect mouse voluntary behaviors proposed as indicators of pain **URL:** \ **Category:** Journal Club\ **Created:** [October 28, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://forum.painresearcher.net/t/inflammation-and-nerve-injury-minimally-affect-mouse-voluntary-behaviors-proposed-as-indicators-of-pain/313 "2017-10-28T22:53:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![achamess](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/forum.painresearcher.net/achamess/32/534_2.png) [@achamess](https://forum.painresearcher.net/u/achamess)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://forum.painresearcher.net/t/inflammation-and-nerve-injury-minimally-affect-mouse-voluntary-behaviors-proposed-as-indicators-of-pain/313/1 "2017-10-28T22:53:18Z")
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452073X1730020X#b0200](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452073X1730020X#b0200) A very useful and well-done paper from @TSheahan ---
**Author:** ![TSheahan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/919ad9/32.png) [@TSheahan](https://forum.painresearcher.net/u/TSheahan)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2017, 7:26pm UTC](https://forum.painresearcher.net/t/inflammation-and-nerve-injury-minimally-affect-mouse-voluntary-behaviors-proposed-as-indicators-of-pain/313/2 "2017-11-01T19:26:13Z")
Glad you think so, @achamess, and thanks for sharing! ---
**Author:** ![achamess](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/forum.painresearcher.net/achamess/32/534_2.png) [@achamess](https://forum.painresearcher.net/u/achamess)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](https://forum.painresearcher.net/t/inflammation-and-nerve-injury-minimally-affect-mouse-voluntary-behaviors-proposed-as-indicators-of-pain/313/3 "2017-11-01T20:40:12Z")
For sure. You did a lot of work and the results are important. it’s amazing though how these interventions like CFA or SNI, which we think causes so much pain, modestly affect the mouse’s overall function. Maybe they’re not experiencing as much pain as we suspect. I actually found your paper when I was following citations from this paper, which you referenced: > > > Complex animal behaviors are likely built from simpler modules, but their systematic identification in mammals remains a significant challenge. Here we use depth imaging to show that 3D mouse pose dynamics are structured at the sub-second timescale. Computational modeling of these fast dynamics effectively describes mouse behavior as a series of reused and stereotyped modules with defined transition probabilities. We demonstrate this combined 3D imaging and machine learning method can be used to unmask potential strategies employed by the brain to adapt to the environment, to capture both predicted and previously hidden phenotypes caused by genetic or neural manipulations, and to systematically expose the global structure of behavior within an experiment. This work reveals that mouse body language is built from identifiable components and is organized in a predictable fashion; deciphering this language establishes an objective framework for characterizing the influence of environmental cues, genes and neural activity on behavior. I think this will ultimately be what we need to apply for pain. Capture some behavior of mice in pain models and let the computer try to detect behaviors that we wouldn’t normally look for. I recall @jordangmccall presented something along these lines at APS. This is where things need to go. Even when done right, I’m skeptical of most pain behavior assays, having done enough of it now myself to know the ways in which the observer can be fooled. But even beyond that, even when done perfectly, our limited bread-and butter assays, like Von Frey, likely miss key aspects of the overall pain phenomenon. Hopefully in the future, new, more objective and more comprehensive behaviors assays will help us learn more.