chronic pain; cognitive neuroscience; acupuncture; MR

I focus on the brain mechanism of chronic pain. I hope to explore different brain mechanisms for different chronic pain patients, so that I can help clinicians to come up with better diagnostic and treatment methods. Because currently there is no gold standards of chronic pain, only ICD-11 provides classifications of different chronic pain. In order to achieve this goal，I hope to establish a large database focusing on several diseaes, including neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders（NMOSDs）, various kinds of headache，knee osteoarthritis（KOA） and trifacial neuralgia by using a series of questionnaires associated with pain sensitivity and symptom, emotion, life quality and empathy, combined with quantitative MRI, resting state fMRI von-frey sensory threshold and electrical pain threshold. I also want to research some substitution therapy which has no side effect like addiction. I think acupuncture is a promising method which has been used in China for thousands of years. Some clinical studies also have shown the evidence of acupuncture in analgesia, but we know little about the mechanism which maybe hinder the application in clinical work.