Sophie Pezet - Pain and Neural Adaptation

Composite showing left : super-resoluted ultrasound image obtained using bio-compatible micro-bubbles as contrast agent. The picture shows direction of the blood flow in the brain vasculature of an anesthetized rat. The colours indicate the directions taken by the blood vessels (red : up and blue : down). From (Errico et al., Nature 2015) Right panel : cartoon illustrating a patient suffering from back pain.

Chronic pain diseases affect 30% of the European population. However, effective treatments are often missing. Only 50% of patients receive appropriate alleviation, due to a lack of treatment specificity and efficacy, as a result of a current poor understanding of the underlying mechanisms. Neuronal plasticity both in the peripheral and central nervous systems were already reported to be key elements in pain maintenance.

Therefore, it is now crucial to develop relevant animal models, to fully decipher the underlying mechanisms, to identify the key molecular target of theses pathologies and to develop new treatments (pharmacological or not, such as motor cortex stimulation, meditation or biofeedback).

The topic of our research is the study of the mechanisms underlying the maintenance of cortical plasticity in chronic pain conditions.