A simple brain scan can detect pain in infants

Researchers have developed a non-invasive means to measure whether infants are in pain, which could prevent babies from undergoing excessive discomfort during medical treatments. One of the major challenges to assessing and managing pain in very young children is that they are unable to articulate their feelings. Instead, pediatricians must rely on observations of facial expressions or heart rates to infer whether babies are experiencing pain. What's more, administering pain relief can be problematic in small children because analgesics that are effective for adults might not be suitable for infants, who metabolize drugs differently - making the correct dosage difficult to calculate. In order to determine a better metric of pain Caroline Hartley, Rebeccah Slater and colleagues from the Department of Paediatrics at Oxford University established a measurement based on electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of brain activity. The researchers derived the EEG signature in a pilot study of 18 infants undergoing a routine and clinically-necessary heel-lance procedure for newborn blood screening, then went on to validate their results in four additional studies of 72 babies in total. The EEG signature was also consistent in babies born preterm, as correlated with traditional means to infer pain (such as grimacing), and was distinct from brain activity changes associated with non-painful stimuli like flashing lights, gentle touches, or loud noises.