Small Animal Operant Conditioning System

The MCS – Harte, Morrow Method is an operant pain testing method that complements reflexive methods by addressing cognitive and motivational processing when used with rodents. Rodents are positioned on one side of a height-adjustable array of nociceptive probes and are permitted to traverse the array in order to escape from an aversive lighted area to a preferred dark area. The array is composed of blunt, tapered probes that are painful but not sufficiently sharp to inflict any tissue damage when the rodent steps on them. input:
output:MCS – Harte, Morrow Method

A novel operant approach to preclinical pain research was developed at the University of Michigan.

Utilizes one's inherent aversion to light.By choosing to cross nociceptive probes, rodents are able to escape aversive light and enter a rewarding dark chamber.Adaptable to other noxious stimuliStudies can be conducted with such measured responses as



by utilizing a variety of pain models.The quantity of completed crosses is as follows:Time required to exit the light chamber (latency)Time required to traverse the probes, among other things.These measured responses have been observed to exhibit significant stimulus response relationships with probe height.