Neural Correlates of Chronic Pain and Objective Pain Assessment

Chronic pain is a significant problem affecting more than 50 million adult Americans and remains one of the most common reasons that patients seek healthcare. Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an FDA-approved neuromodulation treatment to relieve chronic refractory pain. While SCS is widely accepted treatment, there is no objective measurement to assess the effectiveness of SCS in chronic pain patients. Furthermore, there is a high variability in patients’ responses to stimulation with no consensus on optimal stimulation parameters or device selection. Using peri-operative electrophysiology (e.g., EEG, ECG, eye tracking, wearable sensors), signal processing, machine-learning decoding, and neuromodulation (e.g., SCS), we are seeking to identify neural correlates of chronic pain and develop quantified measures that can be used to objectively assess the chronic pain in patients and advance development of new medical technologies.