Our ultimate goal is to uncover how the nervous system processes pain-related sensory information and how chronic pain arises from aberrations in that processing. To that end, we investigate the biophysical basis for neural information processing at the cellular and network levels... most of those studies have broadly applicable results, i.e. not limited to the pain system. Beyond that, we consider the specific consequences of neural information processing for pain. Thus, through a two-step process - linking biophysics with information processing, and information processing with pain - we hope to gain detailed, robust understanding of the biophysical (molecular) basis of chronic pain.

Our approach is a multidisciplinary one involving electrophysiology and calcium imaging together with computational simulations and dynamical analysis.

Our view is that the pain system, like other parts of the nervous system, is complex because it is nonlinear. Nonlinearities occur when different parts of a system (e.g. different ions channels within a neuron, or different neurons within a network) cooperate, compete, or interfere with one another. Nonlinearities cause the principle of superposition to fail, which means the system is not the sum of its parts. To grapple with the nonlinear features of pain processing, we exploit the tools and concepts of nonlinear dynamics. Our hope is that this sort of computational approach will deepen our theoretical understanding of pain processing under normal and pathological conditions.

We are currently at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and are affiliated with the Department of Neurobiology, the Pittsburgh Center for Pain Research, the Center for Neuroscience, and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition.

UPDATE: The lab will be moving to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto in August, 2012. Check out research at Sick Kids and our future home in the Research and Learning Tower. More news to come as things take shape.

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We have been very fortunate in receiving grant support from the following sources:
	Rita Allen Foundation Scholar in Pain. Click here from more information from the American Pain Society about ht
	53rd Mallinckrodt Scholar
	R01 NS076706 R21 NS074146

Contact us at prescott_at_neurobio.pitt.edu.

Last updated February, 2012.