An Automated Squint Method for Time-syncing Behavior and Brain Dynamics in Mouse Pain Studies

Our lab investigates the electrical networks behind complex brain disorders, focusing on how brain activity is coordinated during various states. That's why we developed this analysis approach for automating squint data, which better facilitates peri-neurophysiological recordings with squint behaviors related to migraine. Within migraine studies, a new area of research is beginning to open up, as rodent models of migraine are being used more to study the underlying neural circuit substrates in migraine, and identifying more central mechanisms contributing to migraine like states.

Our protocol addresses the research gap of objectively quantifying pain like responses in a way that can be paired with mechanistic measures such as neurophysiology. Our method presents a widely accessible way to simultaneously quantify spontaneous pain responses, and underlying electrical brain network activity at a sub second resolution. A major goal or hope of this work, is that it will catalyze the use of measuring brain activity in real-time, during migraine experiments in animal models.

We're studying how brain wide electrical network activity changes over time during migraine like episodes. Our goals are both to observe how migraine activity evolves across the brain over time, and to try and develop brain-based markers of migraine activity for better testing therapeutics and rodent models.