Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

Supervisor: Joel Katz, York University. Chronic pain is responsible for millions of Canadians' suffering and accounts for billions of dollars in healthcare costs. A leading cause of chronic pain is chronic postsurgical pain (CPSP) which is a surgical complication characterized by pain that persists beyond normal healing time. Approximately 10-70% of Canadians that undergo surgery develop CPSP. Interestingly, the way individuals remember their painful experiences can influence their postsurgical recovery. Research from my master's thesis found that relative to those who have a tendency to recall specific pain-related events, individuals who generate overly general pain-related memories, are more prone to develop CPSP up to a year after surgery. Changes to the hippocampus (HPC), a region linked to memory, is also a risk factor for chronic pain. Drawing on these findings, the objective of the proposed doctoral project is to investigate an intervention program that aims to prevent CPSP by training individuals to recall episodic pain-related memories. To test the effectiveness of this program, patients scheduled for major surgery will be randomly assigned to either an intervention or control group. Individuals undergoing the intervention will meet with me, the program administrator, via teleconference about 6 times over 2-3 weeks and learn to retrieve contextualized past events. High-resolution structural and functional images will also be collected from a random subsample of participants from each group before and at 12-months. It is hypothesized that those who complete the intervention program will: 1) produce more specific memories and this tendency will be related to better postsurgical recovery indicated by less intense pain up to 1 year after surgery; and 2) have more intact HPC volume at 1-year. This study seeks to provide a novel, easily accessible approach to treating CPSP that if effective, has the potential to reduce the burden of chronic pain.