Intersection of Central Pain and Reward Circuitry in CNS Disorders

Symposium — Sunday, April 22, 2024 — 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM — Convention Center, Room 28A
CNS Section — Chair: Scott Edwards — Co-Chair: Marissa Roberto

Chronic pain affects over 100 million Americans, more than heart disease, cancer, and diabetes combined. In response, 207 million opioid prescriptions were written in 2013. While opioid analgesics remain one the most effective treatments for pain, overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1999, and today 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.  A recent resurgence in heroin use is likely fueled by the current prescription opioid crisis, with heroin being cheaper and sometimes even more readily available to patients. These alarming data have led to the CDC’s declaration of an opioid abuse epidemic, and have generated new preclinical investigation into neurophysiological mechanisms at the intersection of pain and addictive behaviors. Opioid addiction, also known as severe opioid use disorder, is a chronic relapsing psychiatric disease characterized by a compulsion to seek and take opioids, tolerance and escalation of opioid intake, and the manifestation of negative emotional states during attempted abstinence. Evidence from patients and animal models indicates that many opioid withdrawal symptoms are opposite to those produced by opioids. For example, chronic opioid exposure directed at alleviating pain often leaves individuals more sensitive to nociception, a condition known as opioid-induced hyperalgesia. Moreover, in chronic pain sufferers, a parallel magnification of anxiety- and depression-like symptoms is known to occur, and may facilitate the transition to opioid addiction in vulnerable individuals. 

Speakers

• Neuroinflammation caused by chronic pain alters limbic circuitry: Implications for pain and mood disorders.
  Catherine Cahill — Anesthesiology, University of California - Irvine


• Role of the opioid system in the reward pathway in pain-induced negative affect.
  Jose Moron-Concepcion — Anesthesiology, Washington University in St Louis


• Neurobiology of pain and negative reinforcement in drug addiction: New translational targets.
  Amanda Pahng — Physiology, LSU Health New Orleans


• CHAIR
  Scott Edwards —