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The potential of brain rhythms to gauge the vulnerability of an individual to developing chronic pain
11/4/22, 3:00 PM - 11/4/22, 3:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) (30 minutes)
Prof. Ali Mazaheri
Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies Centre for Human Brain Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham
Prof. Ali Mazaheri
Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies Centre for Human Brain Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham

I completed my B.Sc and M.Sc degree in Neuroscience at the University of Toronto, Canada. I obtained my PhD degree at the Donders Institute for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis, I was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam. I am currently an Associate Professor at the School of Psychology, University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), and a Principal Investigator at the Centre for Human Brain Health.

A significant predictor of whether an individual will get chronic pain is the acute pain experienced immediately after surgery. If clinicians can pre-operatively identify which patients are highly pain sensitive, they can take pre-emptive steps to minimize it and prevent its chronification. Here I will present evidence that an individual’s resting peak frequency of alpha activity, measured using EEG , can predict their sensitivity to pain after surgery.