Grant: Project Grant

Chronic pain can be a debilitating condition for which there are currently few treatment options, leading to a major burden on our Health care system and a ~$60 Billion loss annually to the Canadian economy due to lost productivity. Pain signals travel along specific nerve cells from the site of an injury to the spinal cord where they communicate with another set of nerve cells that connect to the brain where pain is perceived as an unpleasant sensation. During chronic pain states, there are persistent changes in the brain circuits that process pain related information. Our goal is to understand and map which brain connections are altered in mouse models of chronic neuropathic pain, and to determine how this process takes place at the cellular level. We will then use state-of-the-art technologies such to manipulate the function of these brain circuits and test the consequences of these interventions on a wide range of pain responses. Specifically, we will combine optogenetics - a technique that will allow us to manipulate specific brain connections with laser light - and pain behavioral assessments in mice to accomplish our goals. In the long term, we anticipate that our findings can ultimately be translated into non invasive brain stimulation techniques for the treatment of intractable pain in chronic pain patients.