Publisher's Synopsis
In this volume, the mechanisms underlying the various forms of neuropathic pain are explored by leading experts in the field, as pain researchers and pain therapists give insights into developments in an inter-disciplinary approach. The reviews provide up-to-date knowledge in pain research from the molecular and cellular level up to imaging of pain in the human cortex and to the perception of pain. Some symptoms of neuropathic pain can now be understood at the molecular level, for example, by modifications in the subunit composition of sodium channels or by the molecular properties of the vanilloid receptor. Synaptic mechanisms similar to those involved in learning and memory formation have now been discovered in pain pathways and real-time images of brain activity in human patients give novel insights into the differential processing of sensory-discriminative versus emotional-aversive aspects of pain. This volume also documents another achievement in pain research during the 1990s, the development of a common language and the assimilation of scientific concepts across disciplines.
