Central Neuropathic Pain: From Bench to Bedside with Clinician, Scientist, and Patient Perspectives

Session Title: Central Neuropathic Pain: From Bench to Bedside with Clinician, Scientist, and Patient Perspectives

Topic: CLINICAL SCIENCE

Description of Workshop: This interdisciplinary workshop brings together expertise from neuromodulation, pain neuroscience, clinical pain medicine, psychology, and lived patient experience to address one of the most complex challenges in pain medicine: central neuropathic pain. Despite advances in diagnostics and pharmacology, many patients continue to experience debilitating pain with limited therapeutic success. This session will explore emerging strategies aimed at understanding and targeting central pain mechanisms through clinical neurology, precision neuromodulation, and psychological insights.

In the first session, Dr. Jan Rosner (Aarhus University, Denmark) will lead a structured dialogue with Erika Lozano, a patient living with traumatic cervical spinal cord injury-related neuropathic pain. This conversation will illuminate the clinical journey, daily management challenges, and the patient’s perspective on both the promise and limitations of emerging treatments. Key takeaways from this session include the potential mismatch in expectations between healthcare providers and patients regarding treatment choices, as well as barriers in access to care and education. The discussion will also underscore the empowerment potential of self-management strategies within long-term pain care. Furthermore, the structured dialogue will highlight essential elements of history-taking in pain medicine, focusing on pain phenomenology, pain interference, and temporal progression of symptoms.

In the second session, Dr. Prasad Shirvalkar (UCSF, USA) will present cutting-edge developments in brain-based biomarkers for neuropathic pain. He will introduce novel neuromodulation strategies, including closed-loop deep brain stimulation (DBS), highlighting how intracranial recordings and adaptive stimulation protocols may personalize therapy for treatment-resistant cases. Finally, he will discuss basic neuroscience studies in his lab characterizing functional connectivity across brain circuits underlying mechanical, thermal and spontaneous pain.

In the final session, Professor Sylvia Gustin (University of New South Wales, Australia) will present innovative brain-based technologies including virtual reality and neurofeedback, as well as novel emotion-focused telehealth interventions for the treatment of central neuropathic pain.. She will discuss how maladaptive brain network changes contribute not only to the persistence of pain but also to its emotional and cognitive dimensions. Her talk will emphasize how neuromodulatory interventions, combined with psychologically informed frameworks, can promote adaptive plasticity and improve pain outcomes.

By integrating neuroscience, neurology, psychology, neuromodulation, and patient narrative, this workshop aims to foster meaningful dialogue on implementing precision pain medicine in real-world clinical practice.

Speakers