Topic: Brain and spinal cord imaging to study the pain mechanism

PI: Yazhuo KONG

Webpage: http://linip.psych.ac.cn

Email: kongyz@psych.ac.cn

Research Interests:

Tactile, pain and itching sensations are complex and multi-dimensional, are important way for humans to perceive the changes and threats from the external environment and hence play a decisive role in maintaining the survival and health of the human body. Therefore, it is essential to systematically study the neural mechanism of multimodal somatosensory. However, the characteristics and regulatory mechanisms of the spinal cord-brainstem-cortex pathway of sensory and pain are still poorly understood, which greatly hinders the effective treatment of somatic sensory nervous system diseases such as chronic pain. We aim to explore the application of multimodal brain and spinal cord MRI technology (structural imaging, fMRI, DTI, ASL, MR spectroscopy, etc.) for better understanding of,

1)        How does the human central nervous system produce and regulate sensory/pain/itch in acute and chronic environment;
2)        The mechanism of consciousness, memory and emotion modulation on pain;
3)        Spinal cord-brainstem-cortex pathway for ascending pain transmission and descending pain modulation;
4)        Central mechanism and analgesic strategy of chronic pain;
5)        Central mechanisms of physical pain and social pain.

Platform：Pain behavior test laboratory, EEG and MRI.