August 26-28, 2010 | Quebec City, Canada
Imaging pain: from cells to brains

Revolutions in imaging techniques have occurred at multiple length scales, offering a wide range of new modalities to probe living tissue and thus opening new perspectives for the understanding of every aspects of pain-related mechanisms, from unraveling how ion channels transduce information into nerve signals, to monitoring molecular interactions, deciphering connectivity and network interactions along pain pathways, identifying functional elements of pain perception and assessing structural, neurochemical and functional alterations in both animal models and patient populations non-invasively.  While the array of subjects spans a very wide range, the development of these techniques all have in common that they put back structural biology into its functional context.  In addition, several of the techniques share common challenges, including signal extraction, processing and interpretation as well as real-time handling of very large data sets.  The objective of the workshop is therefore to bring together leading researchers from the academic and industrial sectors in each of these areas for in depth coverage of challenges and opportunities, allowing pain researchers interested in these new approaches to appreciate how they can be applied to specific research questions.  This area of research also offers enormous potentials for accelerating translation of basic research findings to clinical and therapeutic applications.  It is therefore expected that this symposium will be an excellent conduit for stimulating new collaborations among pain researchers.

Speakers:

• A. Vania Apkarian (Northwestern University, USA)
• Allan I. Basbaum (UCSF, USA)
• Barry Bedell (McGill University, Canada)
• David Borsook (Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard, USA)
• Nigel Bunnett (UCSF, USA)
• M. Catherine Bushnell (McGill University, Canada)
• Daniel Côté (Laval University, Canada)
• Yves De Koninck (Laval University, Canada)
• Lars Farde (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden)
• Richard Harris (University of Michigan, USA)
• John P. Huggins (Pfizer, Sandwich, UK)
• Marc Landry (University of Bordeaux, France)
• Jürgen Sandkühler (Center for Brain Research, Vienna, Austria)
• Irene Tracey (University of Oxford, UK)
• Jon-Kar Zubieta (University of Michigan, USA)
• Mark Zylka (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA)

Target audience:

- Basic scientists interested in the mechanisms of pain and the use of imaging techniques to unravel these mechanisms.
- Clinicians who use imaging techniques for diagnostic purposes of pain conditions or who are interested in the use of these techniques
- Pharmaceutical industry research personnel who are interested in imaging techniques for the development of new pain therapies

Educational Objectives:

1. Participants will learn the use of imaging to identify novel pain mechanisms and pathways. Imaging techniques have revolutionized pain research marking a new area of understanding of pain representation in the cerebral cortex.
2. Participants will also learn the use of imaging to understand molecular pain mechanisms from unraveling how ion channels transduce information into nerve signals, to monitoring molecular interactions, deciphering connectivity and network interactions
3. Participants will learn the use of imaging to phenotype pain patients and identify subpopulations of patients non-invasively
4. Participants will learn choose the right pain treatment and monitor outcomes using imaging techniques.
5. This symposium offers enormous potentials for accelerating translation of basic research findings to clinical and therapeutic applications.  It will be an excellent conduit for stimulating new transdisciplinary collaborations.

Topics:

- Molecular Interactions and Trafficking in Cells
- Cellular Imaging in vivo:
- Whole Brain Imaging of Neurochemicals
- Whole Brain Anatomical & Functional Imaging