Date: Thursday, May 2, 2024, 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., Eastern (US) Time
This webinar is being produced through a collaboration of the IASP’s Pain and Placebo Special Interest Group and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA – in particular – the University of Maryland School of Nursing’s Placebo Beyond Opinions Center. Both groups are aligned on advancing unbiased knowledge of placebo effects by promoting interdisciplinary investigation of the placebo phenomenon and nurturing placebo research.
THIS WEBINAR IS UNIQUE IN THAT IT IS BEING HOSTED (BOTH IN-PERSON AND VIRTUALLY) BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. AS SUCH, A LINK TO THE WEBINAR WILL NOT BE DISTRIBUTED UPON REGISTRATION – RATHER – A LINK TO THE WEBINAR WILL BE DISTRIBUTED TO REGISTRANTS VIA EMAIL BOTH 24 HOURS AND 1 HOUR PRIOR TO THE WEBINAR. FOR ANY QUESTIONS, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EMAIL GREGORY CARBONETTI AT GREGORY.CARBONETTI@IASP-PAIN.ORG.
The IASP defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage” to better articulate the biopsychosocial dimensions of this phenomenon. While our understanding of pain has greatly evolved over the past decades, there are still fundamental questions that need to be addressed, including its psychological components.
Various analyses indicate mindfulness-based meditation to be efficacious for chronic and acute pain management, however, most available studies lack appropriate controls. As such, placebo-related processes could account for these positive mindfulness effects. Therefore, a mechanistic understanding of mindfulness processes is required to disentangle the analgesic effects of mindfulness from placebo-related processes. Join us as we take a deep-dive into the neural and physiological mechanisms supporting mindfulness-based analgesia that distinguish this treatment from placebo-related processes. The webinar will feature:
- Fadel Zeidan, PhD, University of California, San Diego, USA
- Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, University of Maryland School of Nursing, USA (host)
About the Presenter
Fadel Zeidan, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Director of the Pain Health and Mindfulness Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), USA. Fadel is also the Inaugural Endowed Professor of empathy and compassion for the UCSD T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. Additionally, Fadel is a cofounder and Neuroscience Director for the UCSD Center for Psychedelic Research. His current research is focused on determining the psychological, physiological, and neural mechanisms that mediate the relationship between self-regulatory practices and health. Specifically, his work examines the mechanisms of action supporting mindfulness meditation, psychedelics, and cannabis on pain. To date, he and his team have demonstrated that mindfulness meditation is mechanistically distinct from and more effective than placebo, distraction, and relaxation.
About the Host
Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, is an NIH-funded physician-scientist who conducted ground-breaking studies that have advanced scientific understanding of the psychoneurobiological bases of endogenous systems for pain modulation in humans, including the discovery that the vasopressin system is involved in the enhancement of placebo effects with a dimorphic effect. Currently, her team conducts basic and translational research on genomics of orofacial chronic pain, brain mechanisms of expectancy – and observationally induced hypoalgesia – and immersive virtual reality. Her research has been published in top-ranked international journals including Biological Psychiatry, Pain, Nature Neuroscience, JAMA, Lancet Neurology, Science, and NEJM. The impact of her innovative work is clear from her outstanding publications, citation rate, numerous invited lectures worldwide, and media featured by The National Geographic, The New Scientist, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Nature, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and News and World Reports.