Editor’s note: This is the 18th in a series of weekly PRF seminars designed to help keep the pain research community connected during the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide all members of our community with virtual educational opportunities. The seminar series is supported by the Center for Advanced Pain Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, US.
On September 8, 2020, the IASP Pain Research Forum hosted a seminar with Kirsty Bannister, PhD, King’s College London, UK. A Q&A session moderated by Anthony Dickenson, PhD, University College London, UK, followed the presentation.
A recording of this webinar will soon be freely available to IASP members at the IASP Pain Education Resource Center (PERC).
Here is an abstract from Dr. Bannister
A myriad of complex processes come together to drive pain perception in health and disease. A final step in these proceedings involves the activation of top-down modulatory pathways that can act directly to attenuate or enhance perceived pain via descending inhibition or facilitation, respectively. In this seminar, 12 years of research investigating the central nervous system circuitry that governs descending modulatory pathways will be discussed, including the plasticity-related changes that occur following the chronicity of pain. Animal research has allowed investigation of the maladaptive top-down alterations that impact the efficacy of currently available drug treatments, and the clinical relevance of descending modulatory controls will be considered in the context of brainstem-to-spinal cord inhibitory pathways.
About the presenter
Kirsty Bannister, PhD, completed her BSc at University College London and master of research and PhD at Imperial College London before returning to UCL, where she began a decade-long postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Professor Anthony Dickenson. During this time, she identified and characterized novel disease-induced alterations in descending modulatory pathways using multiple models of chronic pain, and was notably awarded the 2017 EFIC IBSA publication award. Fulfilling the London University "golden triangle," Dr. Bannister joined King’s College London in 2017 on a permanent basis as a lecturer in neuropharmacology and principal investigator. She has led multiple symposia at international meetings including the World Congress on Pain and European Pain Federation, and performs section editor duties for multiple pain-related journals. Her research team bridges the gap between bench and bedside pain research by conducting exploratory experiments that seek to molecularly, anatomically, and/or functionally define descending control pathways in rodents and humans using electrophysiology and human psychophysics, respectively.
About the moderator
Anthony Dickenson, BSc, PhD, FmedSci, FBPharmcolS, is professor of neuropharmacology in the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at University College London, UK. He earned his PhD at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, and has held posts in Paris, California, and Sweden. His research interests include the pharmacology of the nervous system with an emphasis on the mechanisms of pain and how pain can be controlled under both normal and pathophysiological conditions, and how to translate basic science to the patient. Professor Dickenson is an Honorary Member of the British Pain Society, was a member of the Council of the International Association for the Study of Pain for six years, and is section editor for the journal PAIN. He has authored more than 360 refereed publications and has an h-index of 102, all due to his motivated and brilliant research team. He is a founding and continuing member of the Wellcome Trust-funded London Pain Consortium. Professor Dickenson has given plenary lectures at the World Congress on Pain; the American Pain Society; the European Pain Congress; the Canadian, French, and Belgium pain societies; ASEAPS; the Scandinavian Pain Society; the British Pain Society; the Thailand, Irish, Singapore, Australian, and New Zealand pain societies; ANZCA; and many other international and national meetings. He has also spoken at the Royal Institution, to GPs and schools on pain.
Join the conversation about the seminar on Twitter @PainResForum #PRFSeminar
We thank the Center for Advanced Pain Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, US, for its support of the PRF seminar series.
