MRI in pain
Christian Maihöfner, Erlangen, Germany

 

Operculo-insular pain
Roland Peyron, Lyon, France

 

Imaging of pain: challenges and limits
Giandomenico Domenico Iannetti, Oxford, UK

The Workshop will explore the uses (and some possible misuses) of functional imaging to understand normal and pathological pain in humans. It will also examine how electrophysiology, in particular intracranial recordings and stimulation, can add data that are not readily accessible to traditional functional imaging. Christian Maihöfner will summarise the contribution of fMRI studies to the understanding of cortical pain mechanisms, and Roland Peyron will focus on the crucial role of the operculo-insular region in both physiological and neuropathic pain. Giandomenico Iannetti will play the sceptical role and will show how the so-called 'pain matrix' developed from PET and fMRI studies may not be a specific network for pain, but rather represent for its most part a non-specific multimodal system of thread detection.