Operant methods that allow animals to avoid painful stimuli are interpreted to assess the aversive quality of pain; however, such measurements require investigator-initiated stimuli to animals. Here we developed a shuttle maze test to repeatedly assess activity associated nociception without forced stimulation. Rats ambulate back and forth between two treat feeders by taking either a short route with a prickly surfaced arch or a longer route with a smooth floor. L5-L6 spinal nerve ligation (SNL) reduced the preference for the short route with the arch, correlated with hypersensitivity in the hind paw. Oral gabapentin restored the short route preference and reduced hypersensitivity in SNL rats, and blockade of spinal α2-adrenoceptors reduced gabapentin's effects on hypersensitivity but not on preference index. These results suggest that SNL injury alters behavior in the shuttle maze test and that the shuttle maze test shows comparable results to reflexive hypersensitivity after SNL in magnitude and response to gabapentin.

中文翻译：

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大鼠周围神经损伤导致与食物强化相关的选择行为发生交替。

允许动物避免痛苦刺激的操作方法被解释为评估疼痛的厌恶质量。然而，这种测量需要研究者对动物的刺激。在这里，我们开发了一个穿梭迷宫测试，以反复评估与疼痛相关的活动，而无需强迫刺激。大鼠可以在两条治疗喂食器之间来回走动，方法是走一条短路，带多刺的弓形，或者走更长的路，带光滑的地板。L5-L6脊神经结扎术（SNL）减少了对弓形短路的偏爱，这与后爪超敏反应有关。口服加巴喷丁可恢复SNL大鼠的短程偏爱并降低其超敏性，而脊髓α2-肾上腺素受体的阻断可降低加巴喷丁对超敏性的影响，但对偏爱指数没有影响。