Chronic Pain Can Be Detected In Equine EEGs
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A horse demonstrating what researchers have begun calling "equine pain face"
Chronic pain is difficult to assess as it involves subjective emotional and cognitive facets. There has been increasing interest in using electroencephalograms (EEGs), which measures brain waves, on resting horses to help determine if the horse is experiencing chronic pain. EEGs have been used as a tool in human medicine to help decipher chronic pain.
Riding horses are prone to chronic back pain; horses that experience this pain show lower levels of engagement and shorter attention spans. Drs. Mathilde Stomp, Serenella d'Ingeo, Séverine Henry, Clémence Lesimple, Hugo Cousillas and Martine Hausberger hypothesized that horses with chronic back pain would have resting-state EEGs that differed from horses that were pain-free.