MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2016 | Page 28

new insights into the brain

Does It Hurt? It May Depend On The Context
We checked in with postdoctoral fellow Dan-Mikael Ellingsen about his work with
the neurophysiology of touch. Here’s what we learned.

Among the questions he’s seeking
to address: How do expectations
and social context shape the ways
in which we experience touch and
pain?
“I did my PhD in neurophysiology
at the Univ. of Gothenburg, Sweden,” he said, “in a research group
that has a strong foundation in the
neurophysiology of touch—especially affective and social touch. As
I learned more about the neuroscience of affect and pain, I soon realized that, despite the fascinating
‘bottom-up’ system of skin fibers
that detect and transmit touch information to the brain, I was more
Dan-Mikael Ellingsen
interested in how these affective experiences are shaped by ‘top-down’
influences, such as expectations and
contextual meaning (e.g., an identical touch stimulus can be pleasant The Martinos Center seemed a
or unpleasant depending on expec- natural fit for his interests, not
least because of its strong work in
tations, who is touching, etc.).
the area of pain
“I did some experiments with
healthy volunteers, investigating “Besides the methodological experplacebo effects on pleasant touch tise at the Center, I was attracted to
versus pain, and cross-sensory in- the Center for Integrative Pain Neufluences between affective visual roImaging (CiPNI) led by Dr. Vitaly
(emotional faces) and tactile (dif- Napadow. I found their research in
ferent types of touch), using tech- basic and clinical pain neuroimagniques such as fMRI, pupillometry, ing very innovative. And they also
HRV and pharmacological manipu- collaborate closely with a broader
network of placebo researchers in
lation with oxytocin.”
Boston (PIPS), which opened up
valuable collaborations for me.”

He is putting real doctors and pain
patients in adjoining MRI scanners—at the same time—so he can
study how they interact
“During my PhD studies, I became increasingly fascinated by
the profound effects the therapeutic relationship can have on health
outcomes. At Martinos, I am working on a project to understand the
processes in the brains of clinicians
and patients, during the therapeutic interaction, which leads to such
placebo-like clinical improvement.
To investigate this, we have real clinicians and pain patients positioned
in two different MRI scanners while
they can interact ‘face-to-face’ via
a video / audio link. While in the
scanners, they participate in an experimental proxy of a clinical treatment encounter, where the clinician
is allowed to use a device to relieve
the patient of experimentally applied pain. All this goes on while we
record brain and autonomic activity
of both participants simultaneously
(often called ‘hyperscanning’).”