We’ve all experienced pain in our lifetime. For the lucky among us, this pain has been short lasting, while for others pain can be a debilitating chronic condition. Historically, much of the research on pain has focused on peripheral signals between the body and the spinal cord, and we’re only recently becoming aware of the many ways in which acute and chronic pain come to affect our brain and our mental health. The goal of this seminar is to explore the many ways in which pain can affect the brain. We will explore how the brain differentially processes the sensory, cognitive, and affective dimensions of pain, as well as the various ways in which pain can signal the brain. In addition, we will examine the scholarly literature to determine how these signals might play a causal role in mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, drug addiction, and more.
About David Barker
Dr. David Barker received his Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience (Psychology) from Rutgers University in 2014. Dr. Barker is a systems neuroscientist whose work investigates circuits and pathways that participate in learning, motivation, and drug addiction. In particular, Dr. Barker is interested in the neural mechanisms of emotion, and how the processing of both positive and negative emotional responses to environmental stimuli drive drug-seeking behavior and perpetuate drug addiction.