Texas A&M University Baylor College of Dentistry

A lengthening in meal duration represents orofacial nociceptive behavior in rodents similar to the guarding behavior of humans with orofacial pain. Eating is a behavior that requires no training or animal manipulation, requires cortical participation, and is not competing with other experimentally induced behaviors, distinguishing this assay from alternative reflex or operant measurements.

Studies of palate development are motivated by the incidence of cleft palate, a birth defect that imposes a tremendous health burden and can leave lasting disfigurement. We demonstrate here a technique to culture palatal shelves that can be used to study different signaling pathways involved in palatal development and fusion.