Preclinical pain testing: a short guide to where we are and where we are going

In this chapter, we make the case that there is still great value in the use of conscious animals for the study of fundamental mechanisms underlying pain and its alleviation. We describe existing models/assays and measures, highlighting where we think they address the needs of the science and where they fall short. Throughout the last decade, there has been a drive to improve experimental design and reporting, and we alert the reader to these problems as well as point to resources that have addressed these issues in more depth. Finally, we may lie on the cusp of a sea change in the way that pain will be studied in vivo. Spectacular advances are being made in technologies that facilitate exquisite control of not only how we influence pain via genetic modification, opto- and chemogenetic modulation, but also how we measure pain with the advent of machine learning-based artificial intelligence. We feel that if the field can translate these preclinical advances into clinically active therapies, continued investment is warranted.