Center for chronic pain and drug abuse

项目总结/摘要 疼痛中心旨在研究和提高对慢性疼痛机制的理解， 阿片类镇痛和阿片类依赖之间的相互作用。我们的主要目标是建立在 最近发现，慢性疼痛是由控制阿片类药物成瘾的相同大脑回路形成的。 我们专注于人类和动物模型中的疼痛，成瘾和阿片类药物研究。所有项目都是统一的 共同的目标是揭示慢性疼痛中的中皮质边缘回路是如何重组的， 重复暴露于阿片类药物，以及这种可塑性如何塑造阿片类药物的镇痛和成瘾特性， 阿片类药物 疼痛中心由一个跨学科的PI团队组成。我们所有人都培养了许多研究生 学生和博士后研究员，并非常重视我们在促进职业发展的作用 疼痛中心的学生 NIDA支持的暑期学生将能够与由以下人员组成的多学科团队互动 若干博士后研究员、研究生、本科生和研究助理。有 为他们提供多种机会，从事人类和动物的机械研究。因为这些 暑期学生没有先前的研究经验，我们将需要与他们探讨如何和在什么 能力，他们可以从事疼痛中心正在进行的研究。

Project Summary/Abstract The Pain Center is designed to study and enhance understanding of the mechanisms of chronic pain and the interaction between opioid analgesia and opioid dependence. Our main goal is to build upon the recent discovery that chronic pain is shaped by the same brain circuitry that controls opioid addiction. We focus on pain, addiction, and opioid research in humans and in animals’ models. All projects are united by the common goal to unravel how the mesocorticolimbic circuitry in chronic pain is reorganized by repeated exposure to opioids, and how this plasticity shapes the analgesic and addictive properties of opioids. The Pain Center is composed of an interdisciplinary team of PIs. All of us have trained many graduate students and post-doctoral fellows and takes very seriously our role in facilitating the career development of the Pain Center students. The NIDA supported summer students will be able to interact with a multidisciplinary team composed by several post-doctoral fellows, graduate, undergraduate students and research assistants. There are multiple opportunities for them to engage in both human and animal mechanistic studies. As these summer students have no prior research experience, we will need to explore with them how and in what capacity they can be engaged in the ongoing research of the Pain Center.