Presentation Details
| Do shrimp feel pain? Behavioral and neurochemical evidence for nociceptive integration Jesi Gibbs, Melissa Hughes, Michael Ruscio. College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, USA |
Abstract
Pain research helps us determine which species warrant welfare protections. Although shrimp are heavily exploited for food and research, little work has been done to assess whether they may experience pain, and few jurisdictions consider their welfare. Nociception is the sensory capacity to respond to harmful stimuli reflexively, which may be accompanied by a centrally processed negative feeling, which we call pain. Evidence of nociceptive integration rules out reflex-only interpretations and supports the hypothesis of pain occurrence. We conducted novel behavioral and neurochemical assays to determine whether nociceptive integration occurs in a shrimp species. Subjects learned to avoid a previously preferred dark chamber when it was associated with nociceptive heat. Additionally, heat-treated subjects showed increased expression of a pain-associated biomarker in brain regions associated with learning, memory, and sensory integration, but not in a region putatively unrelated to pain processing. These findings support the hypothesis of nociceptive integration in shrimp. The welfare of shrimp should therefore be considered in their use as research subjects and commercial resources.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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