Webinar: Experimental pain versus clinical pain in mechanistic research
03/26/2025 | Listen Here!
To date, most mechanistic research studies on the hypoalgesic effects of music have used experimentally induced pain. Even though the use of experimentally induced pain presents important methodological advantages, questions arise about the generalizability of mechanisms identified in healthy volunteers to clinical populations, such as people with chronic pain. This webinar discussed the advantages, disadvantages, and related challenges of using experimental pain versus clinical pain in mechanistic research.
Speakers:
Dr. Michael Sullivan is Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University and the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Health (Tier I). His is the Scientific Director of the Centre for Research on Pain, Disability, and Social Integration. Dr. Sullivan’s research focuses on psychosocial risk factors for prolonged disability associated with debilitating health and mental health conditions. He is known primarily for his research on the adverse effects of psychosocial factors such as catastrophic thinking and perceptions of injustice. He has also been involved in the development of community-based risk-targeted interventions aimed at fostering occupational re-engagement in individuals with debilitating health and mental health conditions.
Dr. David Seminowicz is Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Western Ontario. He directs the Seminowicz Pain Imaging Lab which focuses on researching the cognitive aspects of pain, individual differences in the response to pain, and the consequence of chronic pain on brain structure and function. His studies have clarified how pain-related and cognitive-related brain activity interact and how passive and active pain coping strategies affect these types of activity. Dr. Seminowicz has also used rodent MRI to examine how the brain changes over time from before the onset of an injury that leads to chronic pain to the time when the disease affects cognitive and affective behaviors.
Moderator:
Dr. Pierre Rainville is a Professor in the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Montreal and Director of the Laboratory of the Neuro-Psycho-Physiology of Pain. His research interests include cerebral and mental representation of pain in humans (memory, communication, empathy, etc.), neuropsychological mechanisms of pain modulation (hypnosis, placebo, emotions, etc.), the role of the cerebro-spinal mechanisms of pain regulation in humans, and neurophysiological basis for the psychological factors contributing to persistent pain states