New Perspectives in Chronic Pain Research: Focus on Neuroimaging

Dear Colleagues,

Chronic pain presents many challenges for research. Pain is highly individual and assessments of pain based on self-reports are subjective. In addition, pain is strongly influenced by emotional, cognitive, and health factors. Regions of the central nervous system that are involved with nociception and pain are inaccessible in human research participants except by means of neuroimaging. In recent years, neuroimaging methods have provided important new insights into the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology involved with nociceptive processing and pain perception in both healthy populations and in patients with chronic pain conditions. The studies to date span across the brain, brainstem, and spinal cord and have demonstrated effects such as placebo analgesia, the temporal summation of pain, and the modulation of pain in relation to mood, attention focus, listening to music, and cognitive tasks. Altered neural processes have also been identified in relation to altered pain sensitivity in chronic pain conditions and disease states. These results have provided new insights into individual differences in pain responses, factors that influence descending pain regulation, and how the state of pain sensitivity is modulated on a continual basis. The goal of this Research Topic is to compile novel and innovative neuroimaging studies, in humans or in animals, that further advance our understanding of altered neural processes related to chronic pain conditions.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Studies that aim to identify the neural basis of a chronic pain condition;
• Identifying altered neural responses or connectivity between regions in relation to aberrant pain or nociception;
• Anatomical studies that focus on regions contributing to aspects of pain or its regulation;
• Development of neuroimaging research methods to advance the study of pain;
• Advances in our understanding of neural processes underlying normal healthy pain processes for future comparison with patient populations;
• Reviews of prior neuroimaging studies that provide new insights into our understanding of chronic pain.

Prof. Dr. Patrick W. Stroman
Guest Editor

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• pain
• nociception
• neuroimaging
• fMRI
• PET
• SPECT
• anatomy
• function