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Recent advances in assessing the emotional component of pain in animals Passed

Friday October 29, 2021 14:00 - 15:00

Lecturer: Matt Leach

Symposium: Försöksdjur

There is increasing interest in developing new indices that potentially are a more direct assessment of the emotional component of pain in non-human animals. In this presentation, I will describe some of these new methods and discuss how they might more directly relate to pain experienced as well as any potential limitations of these techniques. These novel methods will include spontaneous ‘complex’ behaviour, a range of operant behavioural assays (including self-administration, conditioned discriminations) and the relatively new method of using facial expressions to assess pain. Finally, I will focus on the development of an automated system for scoring the Mouse Grimace and Body Condition Scales (MouseMApp) using machine learning.

Lecturers

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Matt Leach Lecturer

Dr Matt Leach is scientist and teacher at Newcastle University in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. Matt leads the multi-disciplinary Animal Sciences Expertise Group that is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in integrative animal science. Matt also leads a smaller specialist team of researchers and PhD students that focus on developing and validating of new methods of assessing welfare in a wide range of species including laboratory, companion and farm animals.