Cute cats are wearing cute knitted hats and there's a very scientific reason for it

If you think these cats are wearing cute hats just to look adorable, you'd be wrong. It's for science.

In a bid to understand pain in felines, researchers began attaching electrodes to their subjects. But unfortunately found the animals would chew the electrodes.

Their answer was to incorporate the sensors into comfy crochet beanies. The team, including experts from University of Montreal (UdeM), wanted to create a non-invasive method for understanding how cats experience chronic pain, like that caused by osteoarthritis (OA), and how sensory stimulation might help reduce it.

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The study is the first report of EEG (encephalogram) recording in conscious cats using surface electrodes. Aude Castel, Assistant Professor at UdeM Faculty of Veterinary Medicine - Department of Clinical Sciences, says: "Because cats tended to shake their head and play or chew our EEG electrodes, we had the idea of the little knitted hat that would keep the electrodes in place.

"With some treats and positive reinforcement, the cats tolerated the hat very well and allowed us to record their brain activity while awake and being exposed to different types of sensory stimuli: citrus smell, different light colours. The reasoning behind exposing them to different stimulations is that we wanted to see if, just like in people, we could modulate their brain activity and by the same token, their pain perception, with sensory stimulation."

The team's research focus was to record brain activity in the form of encephalograms in cats with chronic pain from OA to show that, just like in people or horses, specific brain wave frequency can be associated with either stress and pain or conversely a well-being and relaxation.

The study found that the hat method is feasible, and spectral analysis are efficient methods to characterise the response to a given sensory stimulation.

"This opens new avenues for investigating chronic pain mechanisms and developing novel therapeutic strategies," the report concludes. The paper is published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.