Mapping atypical pain processing
Dr. Schwedt and Dr. Chong use brain imaging techniques to analyze and identify imaging biomarkers for concussion, post-traumatic headache and migraine. They and their team study how alterations in brain structure and function relate to pain processing.
Overview
The Neuroimaging of Headache Disorders Laboratory led by Todd J. Schwedt, M.D., and Cat Chong, Ph.D., uses brain MRI to study migraine, post-traumatic headache and other headaches. Correlating patient symptoms with brain imaging helps the team better understand the underlying causes of migraine and other headache disorders.
The lab's goal is to pinpoint the areas of the brain associated with pain and other headache-related symptoms and investigate the neuroimaging commonalities and differences among headache disorders. The lab uses computational modeling techniques that classify specific headache disorders and predict patient outcomes based on structural and functional brain MRI data, often in models that combine multiple data types.