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NIH Director's Seminar Series: Neural and Psychological Influences on Pain and its Assessment

Air date: Friday, December 6, 2024, 12:00:00 PM
Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local
Description: Pain is central to countless clinical conditions and lies at the intersection of multiple urgent health crises: 7.4% of US adults suffer from high impact chronic pain, pain is central to the country’s “opioid epidemic”, and there are massive health disparities in pain. Placebo effects are also largest in pain, pointing to the importance of the psychosocial context surrounding pain and its treatment. However, as pain is inherently subjective, we must determine whether psychological factors shape pain through meaningful biological mechanisms, or whether they simply alter decision-making and pain reports without altering underlying biology. Dr. Atlas will review a body of work focused on the impact of expectations, instructions, and learning on pain and pain-related neurobiological responses. This work indicates that parallel brain pathways, including both pain-specific and domain-general brain circuits, mediate the effects of psychological factors on pain. She will also present new data that sheds light on how social factors shape pain assessment, with implications for mitigating health disparities in pain.
Author: Lauren Atlas, Ph.D.
Runtime: 1 hour