• School of Medicine
• Musculoskeletal
• Our research
  • Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit
  • Cochrane Bone, Joint and Muscle Trauma Group
  • Human pain research
  • Independent Researcher Programmes

Human pain research

The Human Pain Research Group - based at Hope Hospital in Salford - is a multidisciplinary team of clinical and non-clinical researchers within the Clinical Neurosciences Research Group of the Research School of Translational Medicine at The University of Manchester.

Aim

Our aim is to further the understanding of how our human pain experience is shaped by the brain, using state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques. Our motivation is to aid the development of new treatment methods for the management of chronic musculoskeletal pain. We are also involved with the development of national and international guidelines on the clinical treatment of chronic pain.

Research areas

Our research can be divided into three main areas:

• Healthy volunteer studies 
• Patient studies 
• Development of pain stimulators 

For further information on these research areas, see: Human Pain Research Group at Hope Hospital (Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust website)

To date, we and other research groups have identified the main areas of the brain concerned with pain. The challenge now is to understand the role of these brain areas in the various aspects of pain processing, such as anticipation of pain, attention to pain, and emotional responses to pain. A further challenge is to understand how these aspects of pain processing differ between healthy volunteers and chronic pain patients.

We use a number of brain imaging techniques (including PET, fMRI and EEG) to record brain responses to acute and chronic pain. These different techniques vary according to their ability to measure the spatial (i.e. where in the brain) and temporal (i.e. the timing) aspects of neuronal activity in the brain. For example, in order to better understand the timing of pain processing, we have used EEG to measure how the brain anticipates and experiences a painful event, see: EEG recordings of pain anticipation and experience: 2D and 3D representations (PowerPoint, 92 KB). 

Our research has found that the more pain is anticipated, the greater the response in the brain. We hope to use these findings to better understand unexplained symptoms of chronic pain, and to improve psychological treatments for chronic pain.

Funding

Our current funding is from the:

• Arthritis Research UK 
• Medical Research Council (MRC)
• Human Frontiers Science Program
• The Dr Hadwen Trust
• Mind and Life Institute
• Manchester CIMIT: Small Grants Award Scheme

Study volunteers

We are always looking for volunteers to take part in our studies. All of our studies are approved by the Local Research Ethics Committee. Some studies require healthy volunteers and others require patients with particular pain conditions. All volunteers are compensated for their time and for expenses.

For further information on how to participate, please see: Human Pain Research Group: Want to volunteer? (Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust website) 

Research group members 

The University of Manchester is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.