Effect of acute pain on the plastic potential of the sensorimotor cortex

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Pain is an unpleasant sensation, but is an essential part of our body defense system and plays a vital role in healthy survival. Pain act as a strong motivator to withdraw from potentially damaging situations and to avoid those situation in the future, and is therefore a very potent stimulus to induce learning at the behavioral level. At the nervous system level, it has been suggested that the changes occurring in the neurons after intense painful stimulation mirrors the changes underlying learning and memory. Because of that, it has been suggested that the ability of our neurons modify their connections (a phenomenon called plasticity) might be altered when we are in pain. This plasticity is a key feature of the nervous system that allows learning of new abilities, adaptation to different environments and, to some extent, recovery following injury. The main objective of my research program is to investigate whether and how acute pain alters the plastic potential of the regions of our brain that are involved in the control of our movements and in the perception of our own body. To answer that question, we will induce experimental temporary pain in healthy volunteers and study how their brain reacts to different situations compared to when they are not in pain. Those situations include: 1- sustaining an experimental "injury" to a limb (induced by ischemia, a safe and reversible way of simulating a nerve lesion); 2- training in a new motor task; 3- receiving non invasive brain stimulation (a technique inducing temporary changes in brain activity that is used in the treatment of some neurological problem); 4- being exposed to a procedure that cause the illusion of a change in the body (as we know that people with chronic pain often have altered perception of their own body, just think of how your finger feel larger than they are when you just hit them with an hammer). As learning at the motor and sensory levels is accompanied by pain in a variety of contexts, from the relearning of very simple everyday gestures in patients undergoing rehabilitation to the acquisition of highly skilled movement in elite athletes, the potential effect of pain on the induction of plasticity and learning is an important question that has received very limited scientific attention.