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KeynoTe sPeaKer: Mary ellen Jeans lecTure undersTanding huMan Pain PercePTion and analgesia Through advanced neuroiMaging invited speaker: irene Tracey nuffield Professor anaesthetic science & director, oxford centre for fMri of Brain, nuffield department of clinical neurosciences, (head, nuffield division anaesthetics), oxford university, england, uK The ability to experience pain is old and shared across species. It confers an evolutionary advantage and provides a warning of harm or impending threat. As far back as Hippocrates, it was understood that the brain was key to a person experiencing pain. Fortunately, these days we now have many techniques available to explore the human central nervous system in vivo from a functional, structural and chemical perspective in both patients and healthy subjects. Relating specific neurophysiologic measures to perceptual or non-perceptual changes induced by peripheral or central sensitisation, behavioural, psychological or pharmacological mechanisms and identifying their site of action within the CNS has both value and has been a major goal for scientists, clinicians and the pharmaceutical industry. Identifying non-invasively where functional and structural plasticity, sensitisation and other amplification or attenuation processes occur along the pain neuraxis for an individual and relating these neural mechanisms to specific pain experiences, measures of pain relief, persistence of pain states, degree of injury and the subject's underlying genetics, has neuroscientific relevance and potential diagnostic value. Learning Objectives: 1. Better knowledge of the range of physiological measures available using advanced neuroimaging that give novel insights into central pain mechanisms 2. To understand the importance of the descending pain modulatory system in acute and chronic pain 3. To learn how current theories regarding how the brain generates perception can inform the pain field.