Managing Chronic Pain

The management of chronic pain in older adults is limited by the difference in individuals and the lack of tools to determine the best strategies for treatment. One factor that influences the experience of pain is emotional disposition — how people respond to perceived challenges. New research in the neuroscience of emotion suggests that long-term negative mood and adverse emotional experiences alter emotional systems. UF IOA researcher Kim Sibille, Ph.D., and psychology researcher Andreas Keil, Ph.D., will use the stress hormone cortisol and an evaluation of life stress to examine the extent to which these measures predict the ability to respond to a chronic knee pain intervention. They will also test how increasing neuroplasticity may improve outcomes.