Grant: Project Grant

Pain poses the largest health-related socioeconomic burden in Canada, and is linked with the opioid crisis. Pain in the mouth and face regions is different from pain elsewhere in the body-it is more bothersome (or unpleasant), and thus poses an even larger burden. This is because of the important functions of the face, such as feeding and communication. However, very little is known about the neural circuitry of acute and chronic pain affecting the mouth and the face. This gap in our understanding of pain has significantly limited our ability to develop effective pain therapies resulting in greater reliance on opioids for acute and chronic pain management. This is especially important in for pain the mouth and face, as Dentists are the leading prescribers of opioids in young adults, who are at greatest risk of substance use disorder. This highlights the need to better understand the mechanisms of orofacial pain and to identify novel therapeutic targets, which could ultimately curb the opioid crisis. Pain in the face and mouth is caused by signals coming from the face and that are processed in the brain. A study in mice discovered a neural pathway that is thought to be the source of this heightened unpleasantness of pain in the mouth and face. Here, we will study if this new pathway is the source of heightened pain in the mouth and face regions. We also investigate whether endogenous cannabinoids (cannabis-like molecules that are naturally produced by the body) are associated with the function of this circuit. This would be an important finding, as it would provide a new way of targeting this circuit to reduce pain. This is the first study to investigate this circuit in humans, and to determine whether it responds to endogenous cannabinoids.