Human Pain Research Group

The majority of the healthy volunteer studies we are working on involve differentiating the regions of the brain responsible for the emotional versus the sensory aspects of the pain experience (medial and lateral pain systems). Our other research areas include attention to and distraction from pain, and placebo analgesia. We are also investigating state-of-the-art techniques for analysing electroencephalography (EEG) data. These different areas of our research are discussed below.

Medial and lateral pain systems

The experience of pain is complex and involves both sensory and emotional aspects. In order to develop new treatments for pain, it is necessary to further our understanding of how pain is processed in the brain. Current theory states that the areas of the brain involved in pain processing can be divided into 2 networks: the lateral pain system, thought to be responsible for the sensory aspects of pain such as its location and duration; and the medial pain system, thought to be responsible for the emotional aspects of pain, such as how unpleasant it feels. We are working on a wide range of studies, using a variety of techniques, to investigate the brain areas responsible for processing the different aspects of pain, and how the activity in these brain areas differs in patients with chronic pain conditions. More about our research into the medial and lateral pain systems

Volunteer undergoing PET scan while experiencing painful stimuli from the laser

Attention to pain and vision

In collaboration with Dr Charles Spence in The Crossmodal Research Group at The University of Oxford and Dr Francis McGlone at Unilever Research and Development, we are studying the effect of directing attention to pain or vision on the perception of painful and visual stimuli. We have shown that it is possible to discriminate the spatial location of a laser pain stimulus significantly more rapidly when cued to expect a painful stimulus rather than a visual one. In the same way, response to visual targets is faster when attention is directed towards vision rather than pain. We are also investigating the effect of directing attention to pain or vision on judgements of the temporal order of pairs of painful and visual stimuli presented at slightly different times relative to eachother.

Key publication:
Spence C, Bentley DE, Phillips N, McGlone FP, Jones AKP. Selective attention to pain: A psychophysical investigation. Exp Brain Res 2002; 145:395-402

Placebo analgesia

Placebo analgesia occurs when a person is given an inactive substance which they believe is a painkiller, and they experience pain relief due to the fact they think they have been given a drug. It is useful to study placebo analgesia, as it allows us to invesitgate what is happenning in the brain to cause relief from pain. It is hoped that this may lead to new treatments for pain, which may not involve drugs with unwanted side-effects. We have developed a method of inducing placebo analgesia and are using this method to study the processes occurring in the brain during the experience of placebo analgesia.

EEG analysis

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive method of measuring the electrical activity of the brain by recording electrical potentials from the surface of the head using electrodes placed on the scalp. EEG is one of only two techniques currently available (the other being magnetoencephalopgraphy, or MEG) that allow us to measure the activity of the brain in real time, on a millisecond by millisecond basis, in awake people. We are researching a number of state-of-the-art methods of analysing the data from these recordings, to tell us more about when and where these signals are generated within the brain. More about our research into EEG analysis Return to main research page

Positions of the 64 electrodes on the head

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