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Overview

Major advances in the understanding of basic mechanisms of pain and the neural pathways involved were provided by research on animals and human subjects by using well defined noxious stimuli and observing objective or subjective responses. However, spontaneous pain often cannot be sufficiently understood by such simple "input-output" concept with linear causality. Rather, spontaneous pain may involve complex and nonlinear system functioning, resulting in differences in pain severity, time course and response to treatment.

Interfering variables discovered include modulating brain circuits (e.g., descending inhibition from midbrain PAG) and mediators (e.g., amino acid neurotransmitters and their variety of modifiable receptors, endogenous opioids and cannabinoids, cytokines), genetic polymorphisms, changes in gene transcription or epigenetic regulation of neuronal networks. Last not least, psychological conditions such as distraction, stress, anticipation and placebo, for example, can radically alter the severity and time course of pain. The European Pain School 2014 is aimed at opening new frontiers to advanced students and future young investigators.

Contemporary pain science has attained high standards and is acknowledged as an academic discipline worldwide. Likewise, pain medicine is currently emerging as a medical subject with a great integrative potential against the centrifugal and often fragmented tendencies of much of contemporary practical medicine. The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and its worldwide chapters provide impetus to this process, resulting in the advancement of interdisciplinary programs for the ultimate benefit of pain patients. The European Pain School is focused on advancing this new vision among junior investigators interested in basic and clinical research.

Topics

• Views into the brain: a pain matrix?
• Genetic and epigenetic sources of pain variability
• How do spontaneous and evoked pain differ?
• Conditions featuring spontaneous pain, including migraine
• The challenge of animal models of spontaneous pain
• Glial-neuron interactions and neuro-immune mechanisms in pain
• Sex hormones and pain sensitivity
• Central pathways of pain modulation: inhibition and facilitation
• Situational, cognitive and emotional control of pain
• Placebo and verum analgesia — a useful combination to enhance therapeutic outcome?
• Opioids and cannabinoids: links between the control of pain and mood enhancement
• "Catastrophizing": thoughts that amplify pain
• Phantom pain, pain memory and mirror therapy
• Ontogeny of the pain system; is there "fetal programming"?
• Plasticity of ionic channels and inhibitory synaptic networks
• Transporter molecules in the neuropsychiatry of pain
• Pain and consciousness

Faculty

Anna Maria Aloisi, Siena, Italy
Giancarlo Carli, Siena, Italy
Marshall Devor, Jerusalem, Israel
Sulayman Dib-Hajj, New Haven, CT, USA
Pierangelo Geppetti, Florence, Italy
Edmund Keogh, Bath, United Kingdom
Deolinda Lima, Oporto, Portugal
Jeffrey Mogil, Montreal, QC, Canada
Carlo Porro, Modena, Italy
Jordi Serra, Barcelona, Spain
Rolf-Detlef Treede, Heidelberg, Germany
Manfred Zimmermann, Heidelberg, Germany

Contact

Anna Maria Aloisi MD, Ph.D.
Dept Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience
University of Siena
Via Aldo Moro, 2
53100 Siena - Italy
EPS.2014@EuropeanPainSchool.eu