Title: New Horizons in Brain-First Approaches to Chronic Pain

Presenter: Dr. Yoni Ashar, Assistant Professor, Medicine-Internal Medicine, University of Colorado, Anschutz

Abstract: Traditional approaches to managing chronic pain have focused on biomedical factors (e.g., bulging discs, cartilage loss), and have failed to adequately explain symptoms or provide effective treatments. Here, I outline a new approach centering mind and brain processes in the assessment and treatment of chronic pain. I present results from a clinical trial of a novel psychological treatment, pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), with the demonstrated ability to help a substantial portion of patients fully recover from chronic back pain. I discuss treatment mechanisms, with a focus on pain attributions – patients’ beliefs about the underlying causes of pain. And I reflect on implications for how we conceptualize, assess, and treat chronic somatic symptoms.

Bio: Yoni K. Ashar, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He completed his doctorate in clinical psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Weill Cornell Medicine. Yoni’s research uses functional MRI brain imaging, natural language processing, and other clinical and computational tools to understand how mind and brain processes influence health, especially chronic pain. A main research focus is investigating a new class of psychological and neuroscience-based treatments aiming for recovery from chronic pain.