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Pain Modulation and the Transition from Acute to Chronic Pain

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Translational Research in Pain and Itch

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 904))

Abstract

There is now increasing evidence that pathological pain states are at least in part driven by changes in the brain itself. Descending modulatory pathways are known to mediate top-down regulation of nociceptive processing, transmitting cortical and limbic influences to the dorsal horn. However, these modulatory pathways are also intimately intertwined with ascending transmission pathways through positive and negative feedback loops. Models of persistent pain that fail to include descending modulatory pathways are thus incomplete. Although teasing out individual links in a recurrent network is never straightforward, it is imperative that understanding of pain modulation be fully integrated into how we think about pain.

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Acknowledgment

The laboratory is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NS082020 and NS066159).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Neurological Surgery, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, 97239, USA

    Mary M. Heinricher

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  1. Mary M. Heinricher
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Correspondence to Mary M. Heinricher .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dep of Anatomy,Histology and Embryology, Inst of Basic Med Sci Neroscien Cntr, Beijing, China

    Chao Ma

  2. Department of Anesthesiology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China

    Yuguang Huang

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Heinricher, M.M. (2016). Pain Modulation and the Transition from Acute to Chronic Pain. In: Ma, C., Huang, Y. (eds) Translational Research in Pain and Itch. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 904. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7537-3_8

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