From our Head of Group

Welcome to Lab for Integrative NeuroImaging of Pain of the Institute of psychology, CAS. I'm Kong yazhuo, the PI of the research group. I have been engaged in multimodal MRI research in FMRIB Center of Oxford University for many years. I am familiar with the physical principles of MRI, the hardware and software of MRI scanning, and various MRI methods and parameters optimization.

At the end of 2016, I chose to return to China and continued my research work in the Institute of psychology, CAS. My current research focuses on the application of multimodal MR brain imaging technology (structural imaging, fMRI, DTI, ASL, MR spectroscopy, etc.) to explore 1) how the human central nervous system produces and regulates pain in acute and chronic environment; 2) the influence mechanism of consciousness, memory, emotion, etc. on pain; 3) brain stem and spinal cord functional brain imaging to study under pain 4) brain mechanism and analgesic strategy of chronic pain.

Our research group includes 9 members, each of whom has a research direction in the field of pain. The main experimental method is to use a series of questionnaires to collect pain sensitivity, emotion, quality of life, empathy and other indicators and we also use "von-frey", "cheps" to measure pain threshold, pain tolerance and so on. EEG and quantitative brain and spinal MRI analysis are used to analyze brain and spinal activity mechanism. Each member for details, please go to the "PEOPLE" page and if needed, see the right column for the main experimental instruments we use.

At present, we have jointly established the pain neuroimaging and translational research center with the Institute of psychology ,CAS. The center is headed by me, researcher Hu Li and Professor Chen Jun of the Fourth Military Medical University. The center members include researchers from the Institute of psychology, Oxford University, London University College, Peking University and the Fourth Military Medical University. The center is committed to "understanding pain and eliminating pain", mainly from the perspective of neuroscience, psychology, medical physiology, genetics and anthropology. We try to use a variety of research methods, such as neuroimaging technology, behavioral methods and genetics, to conduct multi-species research on animals, healthy people and pain patients. For more information, please refer to the website:http://pain.psych.ac.cn/

Finally, we welcome students interested in multimodal MRI, subcortical brain imaging, pain and neurodegenerative diseases to join us.

Professor Yazhuo Kong, Head of Lab for Integrative NeuroImaging of Pain