Novel approaches to investigate interindividual differences in pain

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

Individual differences in pain are extremely prevalent. A better understanding of their underlying mechanisms is needed to improve pain management. Recent findings based on commonly used statistical approaches failed to capture these differences in pain, suggesting a clear limitation of these techniques to do so. There is a strong need to define innovative approaches that can better capture individual heterogeneity. For example, patterns of similar brain activation across individuals can be extracted using prevalence analyses. Other approaches based on clustering techniques can also be used to characterize pain phenotypes. These approaches might provide new insight into individual differences in pain and result in the definition of more individualized treatment targets.