Theory of Pain Laboratory, UNIGE
PRESENTATION
The ability of appropriately diagnosing others’ pain is critical in social communities, and it is a cornerstone for an efficient health care system. Differently from most medical conditions, which are diagnosed on the basis of reliable biomarkers or radiological imaging, pain is an experience that it is difficult to quantify objectively. Consequently, it is often underestimated and undertreated, even in specialized emergency departments.
The main goal of this research group is to investigate, under a multidisciplinary approach, the cognitive and neural processes underlying the diagnosis of people’s pain. This line of research is at the crossroads of several subdisciplines in experimental psychology and neuroscience (affective processing, embodied cognition, decision making, theory of mind, etc.) and will combine different analytical techniques (behavioral, neuroimaging, machine-learning-algorithms, etc.).
Our long-term ambition is to apply our findings to develop of new educational protocols, grounded on solid psychological and neuroscience research, focused at improving pain management in everyday life, and speficially in specialized hospital environments.
DIRECTOR
Prof. Corrado Corradi Dell'Acqua.
I am a Cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist with long-lasting experience in the study of the human adult brain, through behavioral measures, electrophysiology and brain imaging. I’m interested in the study of the neural mechanisms underlying pain, personal affect and their interaction with social cognition and decision-making.
I am also invested in understanding the cognitive and neural processes underlying the diagnosis and management of people’s pain. This is a research line with both fundamental and translational relevance, and organized on the following axes: neural/physiological fingerprinting of somatic affect, prediction of real-life pain-management behaviour from brain activity, and effect of attention on pain experience and relief.
Publications