Grant: Project Grant

Chronic pain is one of the most prevalent and debilitating conditions worldwide. It afflicts as many as 1 in 5 Canadians and remains poorly managed. While the majority of patients receive some relief with prescribed analgesics, common therapies are often associated with long-term complications and their limited efficacy leave a significant number of people untreated and in constant pain. While there are not many pharmacological solutions for chronic pain, psychotherapies such as mindfulness and behavioural therapies have proven to be efficacious for pain management. The effectiveness of psychotherapies supports the notion that chronic pain can be interpreted as a cognitive problem (i.e. maladaptive memory), and thus, may be vulnerable to modifications as a result of learning. If we can deduce the role that learning plays and the neurobiological mechanisms by which learning changes chronic pain outcomes, this may yield better drug-based or alternative therapies to minimize the pain experience. Towards this goal, we have generated animal models that we believe are useful tools for dissecting the neurobiological association between learning and pain modulation. Depending on the properties of the unconditioned stimulus - aversive or soothing-, pain or pain relief, respectively can be induced by pairing appropriate environmental cues with unconditioned stimuli. We plan to apply techniques from molecular biology and behavioural/cellular/electrophysiological neuroscience to deduce the neurobiological relationship between learning and changes in pain response. The findings from this study will deepen our understanding of the cognitive aspects of pain modulation and may lead to novel treatments for chronic pain.