CFP: Call for Chapters: 'Pain Experience and Neuroscience', Edited Collection, 2014

Call for Chapters: 'Pain Experience and Neuroscience', Edited Collection, 2014 

You are warmly invited to submit your research chapter for possible inclusion in an edited collection entitled 'Pain Experience and Neuroscience'. The collection editor is Dr. Simon van Rysewyk. The target publication date is December 2014. 

According to the International Association of the Study of Pain, pain is 'an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage'. Nociceptor activity induced by a noxious stimulus is not paineven though pain most typically has a peripheral physical cause. Pain is always personal. Many laboratory and clinical studies support the IASP pain definition, and it is widely endorsed in the international pain community. A problem with the IASP pain definition is a lack of precision. Not all pain is associated with tissue damage (stomach and head ache). Pains present in countless varieties associated with different sensations, imbued with different meanings and strong emotions and cognitions. Pain can have intense, complex features that need to be explained.The discovery of how such varied dimensions of pain experiencerelate to each other and to the pain-related neural pathways, neurotransmitters, and integrative centers of the brain that support them is a major scientific challenge in the study of pain. How can it be done? 

The way to meet this challenge is to integrate knowledge fromcurrent models of pain with knowledge and insights from neuroscience, psychology, and humanities. A history of experiential pain investigations does exist. For example, early in the twentieth century, Sir Henry Head, William Landau and George H. Bishop conducted psychophysical studies on qualitative differences between 'first pain' and 'second pain' and neurophysiological studies on the relationship of these pain sub-types to brain activity. Later, temporal differences between first and second pain were explained in terms of central temporal summation in psychophysiological studies by Donald D. Price and others and Roland Staud. These integrative studies use well-known psychophysical scaling methods (e.g., ratio scales) or, the 'experiential-phenomenological method', in studies by Price and colleagues. Other experiential methods that form productive research programs should be considered to model pain experience, such as descriptive experience sampling (DES) (to analyze very brief episodes of experience in natural settings), or the explication interview method to analyze the fine grain of chronic experiences. 

Without a detailed experiential analysis of the qualities of pain, or the qualitative differences between pain sub-types, it is extremely challenging to establish a detailed examination of the neural systems that support such features. Experiential analyses are also essential for the advancement of psychological pain theory andclinical practice. The aim of this edited collection is to contribute towards integrating pain psychology and neuroscience with the humanities in the study of pain. 

Target audiences of 'Pain Experience and Neuroscience'

The expected target audiences of 'Pain Experience and Neuroscience' are scientists, researchers, authors, and practitioners currently active in pain science, including the neurosciences and clinical neurosciences, psychology, and the humanities. The target audience will also include various stakeholders, like academic scientists and humanists, research institutes, and individuals interested in pain, including pain patients, their families and significant others, and the huge audience in the public sector comprising health service providers, government agencies, ministries, education institutions, social service providers and other types of government, commercial and not-for-profit agencies. 

Intent to submit your chapter

Please indicate your intention to submit a manuscript by email to Simon with the title of the chapter, and author(s). A publisher will be approached by Simon once approximately 25 intents to submit have been accepted.

Please feel free to contact Simon if you have any questions or concerns. Many thanks!

IMPORTANT DATES: 

Intent to Submit: December 31, 2013
Full Version: May 31, 2014
Decision Date: July 31, 2014
Final Version: August 31, 2014

Editor 

Dr. Simon van Rysewyk 

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Graduate Institute of Medical Humanities, Taipei Medical University, 250 Wu-Hsing Street, Xin-yi District, Taipei City, Taiwan 110.

email: [email protected]

mobile: +886 916 608 88

Email: [email protected]
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http://utas.academia.edu/SimonvanRysewyk