Congratulations to Benedict Alter, MD, PhD, who was awarded an American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) Inaugural Early Investigator Research Grant for his research project “Brain Biomarker of Endogenous Analgesia in Patients with Chronic Knee Pain.” Dr. Alter is working with mentors Ajay Wasan, MD, MSc and Ted Huppert, PhD.
In his project, Dr. Alter will use an alternative brain imaging technique, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), to measure brain activity as a mechanistically relevant biomarker of chronic pain to test the hypothesis that fNIRS-measured brain activity during endogenous analgesia is diminished in chronic knee pain due to osteoarthritis. He hopes for this work to propel future prospective studies engaging the proposed novel combination of ambulatory brain imaging with fNIRS and the pain psychophysics of endogenous analgesia.