Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Chronic pain poses significant challenges as it is difficult to treat and can negatively impact the daily life of those affected by it. The affective component of pain plays a major role in modulating pain perception. For instance, the mere observation of someone else in pain can trigger the brain's pain network comparably to an actual painful situation. A recent study identified that descending pain inhibition can be triggered simply by observing yourself or someone else previously experiencing pain. This analgesic effect was correlated with the level of empathy, but only in women. These results are bringing into question how different perspectives in an empathic observation may influence activity of the pain modulation systems of the brain in men and women. The proposed study aims to investigate how different genders perceive and cope with pain, and how this is reflected in activation of pain modulation pathways. Combining Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Electroencephalogram measurements, these tests will be able to estimate the amount of certain neurotransmitters such as glutamate and GABA (involved in descending pain modulation) in key areas of the brain. Persons will cope with a painful stimulus either from different viewpoints (1at or 3rd person), or freely, in order to examine how different perspectives towards coping with pain influence how descending pain inhibition is triggered. Furthermore, sex and gender differences in these pathways will be explored, including the relationship of brain activity to different coping perspectives during an experience of pain.