The 2019 PRF-NAPS Correspondents Blog

by PRF Team

Six early-career pain researchers are participating in the PRF-NAPS Correspondents program during the 2019 North American Pain School, which took place June 23-28 in Montebello, Quebec City, Canada. The Correspondents program is a unique science communications training program that provides participants with knowledge and skills needed to communicate science effectively to a wide range of pain researchers and to patients and the broader public. The Correspondents conducted interviews with NAPS Visiting Faculty, are writing summaries of scientific lectures—and provided live blogging too! Take a look at their blog posts below. 

NAPS Recaps

The Train to Pain Is Mainly in the Brain (by NAPS, We Got It!)

NAPS Rocks!

Now That I’ve Recovered from My Post-NAPS Nap….

The Top Four Reasons Why You Should Apply for NAPS 2020 (and Be a PRF Correspondent)

From a Feeble Tweet to a Mighty Caw

An All-Around Professional and Personal Development Experience

The Train to Pain Is Mainly in the Brain (by NAPS, We Got It!)

Montreal at night. Visiting Montreal before or after NAPS is a great idea. Photo credit: Biafra Ahanonu.

Now, once again where is the pain? In the brain! In the brain! – My Fair Clinician (NAPS 2019 Film Festival, Montebello, Quebec, Canada).

The North American Pain School (NAPS) is a unique experience. The combination of great faculty and trainees, awesome discussions and talks, and a beautiful location help produce a week that will continue to pay dividends far into the future. In this post I want to give future NAPS attendees an idea of why I loved NAPS so much, interspersed with photos that give a feel for what to expect. And for those who want to experience a firehose of NAPS, scroll through the posts at #NAPainSchool. Onward to my NAPS recap!

Faculty and patient partners

The faculty truly took the experience to another level. From enlightening discussions about hype in research with Dr. Jeff Mogil (@JeffreyMogil) to intense chats about calcium imaging with Dr. Michael Gold and a useful workshop by Dr. Christine Chambers on dealing with sexism in the workplace. The rest of the executive committee provided valuable insights: I enjoyed talking with Dr. Roger Fillingim about pursuing passion vs. finding a job and doing it well, along with Dr. Petra Schweinhardt’s workshop in which the NAPSters got to experience several different pain tests themselves (e.g., “To know what kind of pain you’re dealing with”), and with Dr. Charles Argoff, who provided valuable clinical insight.

In addition, the visiting faculty— Drs. Yves De Koninck, Troels Jensen, Judith Paice, Cheryl Stucky, Robert Edwards, and Jennifer Laird—also helped enhance the experience, both from their talks and in discussions with them (keep an eye out on PRF for summaries of their talks). The patient partners Billie Jo Bogden (@BogdenJo) and Justina Marianayagam (@_justinam) provided great insights into the overall experience on the patient side as well as providing needed constructive feedback on both word choice and mindsets of researchers and clinicians; continuing to have patient partners or even a couple more would further improve NAPS.

Networking

(1) Food! There is a lot of great food at NAPS. (2) People apparently hate hip-hop. That is all I learned from the ice breaker (just kidding [but not about the hip-hop]). (3) Faces are hilarious, but pain is not. Much discussion about pros and cons of pain scales during NAPS. (4) The awesome Dr. Roger Fillingim giving a fantastic workshop on mentorship. Photo credit: Biafra Ahanonu.

Networking always sounds so…clinical (pun alert!); however, NAPS could also be known as NAPS (North American Pain Socializing) as it provided one of the best experiences in terms of getting to know both established and up-and-coming researchers in pain. You also gain insights into the different routes people took to become pain researchers, which more often than not appeared to be by chance or unplanned (as I wrote in The Origin of Pain Researchers).

The best thing you can do at NAPS is continuously try to talk to new people. Meet all the trainees! During NAPS I encountered people who work with returning combat veterans, have done veterinary work, interact with patients in rural areas of developing countries, spent time studying obesity and then moved into sleep research, gave me new insights into the culture of Iran, provided a Canadian’s perspective of moving to and living in the (USA! USA! USA!) American South, and talked about their different perspectives on pain having come from a more computational background. And this is only a slice! It is one of the great benefits of NAPS that people from such a broad set of backgrounds are brought to one place where ample time is given to explore and learn.

Pain

(1) The bonfire. For some a way to test their pain thresholds… (2) Maple taffy. This stuff is amazing. (3) Dr. Mogil giving an informative workshop on presenting. Featuring Dr. Allan Basbaum. (4) Effective rhetoric at the student debates. Photo credit: Biafra Ahanonu.

The focus on NAPS was on pain. Going in, I actually thought there would be more wrestling with the never-ending philosophical debate about what “pain” is. While these types of discussions can be useful, it was refreshing at NAPS that pain was treated as, or taken as a given to be, a sensory and affective-motivational percept that we can study objectively. I will write more about this in the future, as it is possible the lack of discussion of what we really mean by pain could be hindering discoveries, but this allowed more fruitful time to learn about all the amazing research going on; to hear about initiatives taking place in the clinic, by patients, and at universities; and to discuss how our understanding of pain could be improved.

In particular, I am still thinking about Dr. Charles Argoff’s workshop, “Interviewing and Diagnosing Pain Patients.” In particular, during the workshop there was a good amount of discussion about asking patients if they have returned to pre-pain function rather than using a quantitative pain scale. While I still have questions about having patients self-report restoration of function (I would have liked to see data showing that patient’s reports agree with assessments by their loved ones, work colleagues, or others who know them), this brought up a good point. It also reminded me of a fun lunchtime topic discussion with Dr. Petra Schweinhardt about the use of functional brain imaging to assess pain and my questions about how it could be used to obtain a secondary verification of pain—inspired by discussions with trainee Saurab Sharma about rural Nepalese claiming to not be in pain (for cultural reasons) while limping away as if they are suppressing a great deal of pain. From this you can get a feel for how various conversations throughout NAPS intertwined with one another to help trainees begin to synthesize the clinical, technological, and cultural aspects of pain to address an urgent issue: how do we measure pain and use it to verify whether therapies are working? This is one of the great benefits of NAPS and I have only highlighted one topic of the many discussed.

Culture and activities

(1) Andy Tay’s birthday celebration. (2) Picture taking, Dr. Mogil edition. (3) Rhetoric at the debates, do we want a “cure” for pain? (See plot of Black Museum). (4) The amazing NAPS crew; ignore the person hogging the left part of the picture. Photo credit: Biafra Ahanonu.

Did you know that, in the course of several generations, Francophone-Anglophone relations have improved even though nearly 25 years ago Quebec came within a hair’s breadth of passing a succession referendum (for those interested, read more here)? NAPS included people from a variety of countries (including Yarim De La Luz-Cuellar from Mexico and Saurab Sharma from Nepal), which helped inform the science (learning how different cultures approached pain, especially in the case of Nepal) and provided a richer background for discussions. At the same time we were able to bond over a variety of activities, such as white water rafting (our boat was known as the “Wave Killers” [“Coming to save the day!”]), where I learned that our guide made the important point that [paraphrasing] “I could either be at home watching Netflix on the weekends or guiding people down the rapids.” These helped break up the intense discussions about pain, leaving me more refreshed and ready to dive back in.

Research

Student talks from NAPS Day 3 (June 25^th). Photo credit: Biafra Ahanonu.

One of best aspects of NAPS was the student talks. Pain-related cognitive impairment, battlefield anesthesia & acupuncture, epigenome sex differences in pain, dopaminergic pain modulation, parent-child interactions, and more! Future trainees should definitely spend time asking as many people as possible about their research during breaks. You can find out about the various topics discussed at NAPS 2019, but as has been highlighted here, there were a plethora of great talks, workshops, and lectures that will prove valuable jumping-off points at NAPS and going forward after trainees are back home.

I would like to thank Jess Ross (@JRossNeuro) for informing me about NAPS, Neil Andrews (@NeilAndrews) for providing guidance and support as a NAPS Correspondent, and all those who helped organize and coordinate (a special shout out to Drs. Erwan Leclair and Helene Beaudry). NAPS was without a doubt a top-tier experience; from the networking to research to enjoying Quebec, there is much here to offer. Coming from a non-pain lab, Dr. Mark Schnitzer’s at Stanford, NAPS has enhanced the training I received while collaborating with Drs. Grégory Scherrer and Gregory Corder. Prospective NAPSters can get in touch with me (bahanonu@ alum.mit.edu), as I would be happy to answer questions about the program and encourage any trainees interested in pain to apply.

Biafra Ahanonu, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

NAPS Rocks! 

   

Now That I’ve Recovered from My Post-NAPS Nap….

Now that I’ve recovered from an AMAZING week in Montebello, time for a recap of #NAPainSchool 2019 edition! In this blog post, I’m going to focus on my big three “take-homes” from my time at NAPS.

1) The importance of diversity

As highlighted in Dr. Christine Chambers’ (@DrCChambers) talk on “Breaking Barriers: Gender, Unconscious Bias, and Your Career,” diversity matters in science. As I reflect on my week at NAPS, it was so great to have the privilege of connecting with other trainees, patient partners, and pain researchers from across Canada (shout out to @_justinam from the Northwest Territories) and from countries across the world (honourable mention to @atarii_cuellar from Mexico and @Fleurainfleur from Belgium!). I find it so refreshing to hear different perspectives as it always opens my eyes to new ideas and ways of living, which I think is critical in the field of pain research.

2) “Don’t just reach for low-hanging fruit”

The biggest “aha moment” for me from my week at NAPS came from Billie Jo Bodgen (@BogdenJo), one of the #ClassOf2019 patient partners. In her lecture on “Patient Engagement: My Path to Partnership in Pain Research,” Billie Jo ended with an ask that all of us in the audience don’t just reach for low-hanging fruit in pain research, but rather seek out answers to complex problems that don’t always have easy solutions. This message was again echoed by Dr. Cheryl Stucky (@Dr_CherylStucky), who ended her talk, entitled “Animal Models for Pain in Human: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Area for Improvement,” with an “Ode to Billie Jo.” Here she also emphasized the importance of embracing complex problems in pain research.     

3) The value of community

Last, but not least, at NAPS I was reminded loud and clear of the value and importance of feeling part of a community. During my time in Montebello, I got to learn alongside a group of people who all share a common interest in improving pain research and care – whether in the context of pediatrics, veterans, or cancer survivors. As I settle back into my work in the School of Rehabilitation Therapy (https://www.rehab.queensu.ca) at Queen’s University, I look forward to keeping in touch with my fellow #ClassOf2019 for support, guidance, and mentorship.  

As always, I’ll be continuing to tweet away about my experiences as a physiotherapist and pain researcher, so follow me on twitter (@vader_kyle) and let’s keep the conversation going!

Kyle Vader, PhD student, rehabilitation science, Queen’s University, Canada. 

The Top Four Reasons Why You Should Apply for NAPS 2020 (and Be a PRF Correspondent)

I can’t believe it’s the last day of NAPS 2019. I have been to many conferences and several schools as a researcher, but I can confidently say that this is one of the warmest and most welcoming communities I have ever met. Based on my personal experience, I now share with you the top four reasons why you should apply for NAPS 2020 and also the PRF Correspondents program!

1) It’s a unique cultural experience

Whether you need a break, a research inspiration or both, NAPS is a great event to attend. Fairmont Le Château Montebello is a wonderful venue. The food here is amazing regardless of whether you are a fan of BBQ meat, seafood or fresh vegetables. NAPSters also get a chance to know more about Québécois culture during a Sugar Shack dinner! I am not going to reveal how special the dinner is, except to provide the picture below. Do I even need to talk about the jacuzzi? 

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2) It’s diverse and inclusive

Jeffrey Mogil, Director of NAPS (and my favorite speaker), shared with us that the NAPSter selection rate was about 25%, with almost complete gender balance and excellent representation of different ethnicities. NAPS also featured pain researchers at different stages of their careers,  from first year PhD students to highly accomplished pain leaders. In addition, we had clinical researchers, basic scientists and even engineers like me all gathered in the same room to learn about pain – a truly multi-disciplinary community.

Because of this diverse group, we had the opportunity to learn about pain from different perspectives. For instance, we did an experiment with capsaicin on my arm (see image below), and while it still stings as I am writing, the experience was 100% worth it! More uniquely, we also had patient partners sharing their medical journeys. For anyone who wants to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience learning about pain from multiple angles, NAPS is THE meeting to attend.

3) You can learn “soft” skills

Many graduate programs train their students intensively in experiments, but it is clear that in order for students to do well in their careers and to make an impact on society, they also need soft skills. During NAPS, there were workshops to train participants in skills like managing mentor-mentee relationships, ensuring research rigor, devloping science communication skills and how to present your work like a salesman. These varied skills are especially important for early-career scientists who wish to better communicate their research to peers, the public and future employers. 

4) Make friends and build networks

What has been so special about NAPS for me is that the participants are extraordinarily friendly. It has been easy initiating conversations with NAPSters working in entirely different research areas. Faculty members are also extremely approachable. There seemed to be no barriers, which was great for learning and making friends.

An additional bonus if you decide to apply to become a PRF Correspondent is that you would have the opportunity to perform interviews. I decided to interview Professor Cheryl Stucky and, by the way, she blew me away with her exciting childhood stories, sharp insights into pain research and valuable advice about student mentoring. The Eureka! moments and genuine interactions that we shared will be something I will remember for many years to come. Stay tuned for our interview!

I hope that I have convinced you. Start your application early and if you need any advice on your application materials, I am most happy to help. Reach me at andy.csm2012@gmail.com.

Andy Tay, postdoctoral scholar, Stanford University, Stanford, US.

From a Feeble Tweet to a Mighty Caw

“Oh geez, really? This is gonna be painful. I’d really rather avoid it. Okay, I guess I have to suck it up and just do it.”

A glimpse into my mind two months ago would have revealed some variation on those words, but it would not have been related to “volunteering” for a pain assessment workshop (right, fellow NAPSters?). It would actually have been about getting a Twitter account, something I purposefully avoided for a long time. To me, Twitter represented the deterioration of face-to-face contact, time and space for more extensive communication (thank goodness for blogs), and comprehensive knowledge…right?

Wrong! At NAPS, I quickly saw that I had been missing out on a whole community of researchers – not just live tweeting at events like NAPS, but sharing what they learn when they learn it. One of the most validating moments for me at NAPS was when I noticed Billie Jo Bogden (@BogdenJo) sharing my posts, and those posts reaching other people – people I had never met! Not everyone is lucky enough to have access to pain research, but everyone should benefit from it.

I won’t lie and preach that, after six days of live tweeting (check out posts @NAPainSchool, @ImCatherinePare, @vader_kyle, and the like), Twitter had transformed me and that I only speak in 280 character tweets. But Dr. Christine Chambers’ initiative did force me to open my eyes to new and innovative ways of sharing science.

So am I on Twitter every day now? Certainly not, and most days I avoid it. But my views on Twitter and how it might be relevant to science have nonetheless changed. After all, if posting something on Twitter helps even one person deal with their pain, I can certainly get over my own “pain.”

Catherine Paré, PhD student, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

An All-Around Professional and Personal Development Experience

Almost every single person is familiar with pain. It’s the most common reason why people seek medical help and is a factor in most diseases and conditions. Thus, we can all agree that understanding pain is pretty important. So when 30 pain trainees go off to meet with 12 of the most established pain researchers amongst the beautiful maple trees of Quebec…you can just imagine the magic that’s bound to take place.

This was exactly what #NAPainSchool was. The people, the science, the use of technology, the food, the connections—all of it came together to form the most comprehensive professional and personal development experience of my academic career thus far. Every day was truly unique in the message that it brought home but a common thread that ran through it all is the importance of tackling the big, complex problems and the need to look at problems from different sides and with great compassion. From the yoga sessions to the insightful talks, to the workshops on skills and interpersonal relationships and much more, it really was an intensive, all-around experience. Very quickly a community was built and by graduation day, we all felt like a family. This is the magic of NAPS!

I’m not sure I knew everything to expect coming into NAPS 2019 but I certainly left with a lot. What I have come away with is a deep sense of community, a greater sense of pride in the work that we do, and, most of all, a wealth of scientific knowledge and new ideas about my own work.

I feel so privileged to have been able to learn from the faculty and other NAPSters. Special thanks to @IASPpain and @PainResForum, the executive and planning committees, and all the sponsors for making this experience truly worthwhile. I look forward to being part of this family for a long time.

Titilola 'Lola' Akintola, PhD student, University of Maryland, Baltimore, US

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Pain Testing in Humans (Is Quite Painful!)

Science Communication Lessons

Speaking and Writing About Your Science … IT MATTERS!

A Call to Action

What’s the Deal with Having Patient Partners in Scientific Meetings?

Writing About Your Research for the Public: “Pain in the Brain” Edition

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Pain Treatment During the Opioid Crisis

How to Be a Good (Pain) Trainee in Five Steps or Less!

Pain Assessment in Research Versus Clinical Practice: A Disconnect

“Well, This Is Quite a Pickle”

Calling All NAPSters: Preprints to Accelerate Pain Research!

Monday, June 24, 2019

The Origin of Pain Researchers

On the Nature of Chocolate Mousse

Trainee Talks Were a Highlight of the First Full Day of NAPS

The Vast and Diverse Field of Pain Research

Yoga, Pain Science & Tweeting … OH MY!

Pain Is Complex: Here’s How Engineers Can Help

NAPS Previews

Lost and Found

Moving My Research Forward With the Help of NAPS

NAPS 2019 … Here We Come!!!

Ready to Be a NAPSter

Summer Camp for Adults Studyi