Cats, like all animals and humans, can get sick. When there is a serious problem, a cat may need to get a brain scan.

The problem, however, is that keeping electrodes on the head of a cat is like, well, herding cats.

The University of Montreal was struggling with this regularly as they often administered brain scans to detect painful conditions such as osteoarthritis and other issues. They could sedate the cats to take the scans, but this did not provide accurate results.

So, they came up with another solution.

In a press release, veterinary researchers announced that they have come up with a way to keep the electrodes in place. They custom-crocheted caps that hid the electrodes within.

This was an important finding explains PhD student and study coauthor Alienor Delsart:

“When you spend more time putting electrodes back on than you do actually recording the EEGs, you get creative.”

The new method works so well that they were able to publish a study in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

The researchers first got the idea from watching YouTube videos that taught people how to crochet hats for cats. From there, it was simply a matter of incorporating the electrodes.

While the cats still don’t like wearing the caps much more than they did the electrodes, they do stay in place much better, which allows the researchers to get the data that they need. It works so well that Eric Troncy, one of the team leads on this project, said:

“We now plan to obtain [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Alliance] funding, in partnership with private companies, to enable us to establish a genuine EEG signature for chronic pain and many other applications that will enable us to automate chronic pain detection in the future.”

If this helps the researchers to learn more about feline health issues, it is definitely a good thing. You can watch the YouTube video on crocheting cat hats here:

These cat hats are not just cute, but medically necessary.

Who doesn’t love that?

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