Professor Paul Glare, Pain Foundation and Painaustralia Board Director, hosted the Kolling Institute’s Neuroscience and Pain Research Showcase. The webinar covered a range of topics including:
- Health and Medical Research Initiatives;
- Translational Research;
- Academic Psychiatry;
- Genome Sequencing;
- Pharmacology for Older Patients; and
- Spinal Cord Injury.
Presentations by the Pain Management Research Institute (PMRI) on preventing disability in the recently injured and on brain circuits, and by the John Walsh Centre for Rehabilitation Research (JWCRR) on spinal injury, traumatic brain injury and pain are of particular interest to people living with chronic pain.
In his presentation on disability in the recently injured, Professor Michael Nicholas, Director, Pain Education and Pain Management Programs at the PMRI argued that a multidisciplinary approach to pain management was more effective than relying solely on medication.
A similar approach was presented by the Head of the JWCRR, Professor Ian Cameron during his presentation on effective ways to treat people with spinal injury, traumatic brain injury and pain.
Dr Karin Aubrey from the PMRI Neurobiology of Pain Lab presented on her team’s topic of “Brain Circuits Involved in Pain Signalling”. They combine electrophysiology with optogenetics and imaging, animal behaviour and chemogenetics to study how our brains control sensory information as it enters the spinal cord. (We are very proud of the fact that much of the scientific equipment installed in her lab has been funded by Pain Foundation benefactors.)
