Comparing the Rat Grimace Scale and a composite behaviour score in rats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There is a growing interest in the use of voluntarily displayed ongoing behaviours in laboratory animals to assess the pain experience. In rats, two behavioural pain scales, the Rat Grimace Scale (RGS, a facial expression scale) and a composite behaviour score (CBS, a behavioural ethogram reliant on postural changes), are both promising pain assessment methods. Both scales have been used to assess pain in a laparotomy model, however, they have never been compared directly and the knowledge of how different analgesics may affect these two scales is limited. This study aimed to provide a comparison to discriminate the temporal and analgesic response in a laparotomy model. Female Wistar (n = 26) and Sprague Dawley rats (n = 26) were block randomized to receive saline, meloxicam (2 mg/kg) or buprenorphine (0.05 mg/kg) 30 minutes before laparotomy. Rats were video-recorded before surgery (BL) and at 30, 150, 270, and 390 minutes post-operatively. Videos were assessed according to both scales by a trained, blinded observer. Both CBS and RGS scores increased significantly at all post surgical timepoints in the saline group. Both buprenorphine and meloxicam reduced CBS scores to baseline levels following laparotomy; however, RGS scores were only reduced following buprenorphine. RGS scores in the meloxicam group remained similar to scores of the saline group. These findings suggest that the CBS and RGS differ in their sensitivity to discriminating analgesic effects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".