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Pain: Translating Neuroscience into Clinical Practice

Course Outline: This workshop will deepen clinicians’ understanding of pain neuroscience in order to clarify more complex patient presentations and facilitate refinement of clinical assessments, and application of more appropriate and effective interventions. Read more ↓
13 Episodes 3h 43m
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Episodes
01
Introduction: The Pain Course

Explore how modern pain neuroscience sharpens clinical assessment, reasoning, and treatment in everyday practice. Learn to connect peripheral and central pain mechanisms with practical skills and case-based thinking to deliver more targeted, effective interventions.

06:08
02
Multidimensional Models

Explore pain as a dynamic, multidimensional experience shaped by movement, psychology, biology, and lifestyle rather than a simple linear cause. Learn how these interacting factors can guide more precise clinical reasoning and help tailor understanding to each individual’s presentation.

13:40
03
Niamh & Martin Q&A webinar Pain Science
55:25
04
Brain in Pain

Discover how the brain shapes pain through emotion, memory, fear, and expectation—and why anxiety and stress can amplify suffering. You’ll also see how protective behaviors and pain beliefs create vicious cycles, revealing practical clues for better assessment and care.

18:48
05
Nociception & Peripheral Sensitisation

Explore how nociception, inflammation, and peripheral sensitization shape pain, and why injured tissues can become more reactive over time. Through a low back pain case, learners are guided to identify peripheral pain drivers and apply sharper clinical reasoning to treatment.

17:48
06
Psychosocial assessment & treatment

Learn how to assess psychosocial factors in musculoskeletal pain using practical screening tools, clear communication, and holistic treatment strategies. Discover how physiotherapists can reduce fear, improve movement, and know when psychological referral is needed.

09:54
07
Clinical Reasoning

Learn how to sharpen clinical reasoning for pain by using practical tools that quickly map the factors shaping an individual’s presentation. Through a chronic low back pain case, you’ll see how movement, pain mechanisms, psychosocial influences, and comorbidities can guide more targeted management.

11:54
08
Spinal Cord Modulation

Explore how the spinal cord can amplify pain, why touch may sometimes soothe and other times hurt, and what central sensitization really means in practice. You’ll also learn how clinicians identify altered pain processing through practical sensory tests and sharper clinical reasoning.

37:43
09
Pain Sensitivity

Research shows that people with musculoskeletal pain often have heightened pain sensitivity, but the pattern is far from uniform. Discover how distinct sensory profiles can shape symptoms, predict pain and disability, and potentially guide more targeted treatment decisions.

06:49
10
Pain types

Explore how clinicians distinguish nociceptive from nociplastic pain, and why that difference can completely change assessment and treatment. You’ll also see how psychosocial factors, movement patterns, and long-standing symptoms shape a more effective plan for a complex back pain case.

08:31
11
Descending Nociceptive Modulation

Discover how the brain can either dampen pain or amplify it by changing the chemicals that modulate nociception. You’ll also learn how anxiety, mood, and simple clinical tests like exercise or cold-water assessment can reveal whether someone is in a pro- or anti-nociceptive state.

20:10
12
Explaining pain presentations to patients

Learn how to explain persistent pain in a simple, patient-friendly way by showing how movement, stress, beliefs, health conditions, and tissue sensitivity can all interact. Discover practical models that help patients make sense of why pain persists and what may be driving it.

06:26
13
Case Two Clinical Reasoning

Work through a complex chronic low back pain case where pain intensity is low but disability is high, and uncover how psychosocial stress, sleep disruption, lifestyle, and health factors can outweigh movement findings. Learn to use clinical reasoning tools to identify a nociplastic presentation and guide more targeted, whole-person care.

10:22

Aims:

1. Improve participant’s knowledge of pain neurophysiology relevant for physiotherapists including: nociception and inflammation, pain modulation and neuro-endocrine-immune system responses

2. Using interactive tasks and clinical scenarios, explore how these physiological processes relate to patient presentations and influence clinical decision making (assessment and treatment)

 

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this workshop participants will:

1. Understand the neurophysiological processes, and clinical features of nociception, central sensitization and inhibition

2. Be able to perform physical assessments for pain sensitization and descending pain modulation

3. Understand the evidence for investigating psychological contributions to pain and how these factors impact on pain sensitization and descending pain modulation

4. Be able to identify psychological contributions to pain within clinical case studies, and be aware of strategies to address these factors

5. Understand interactions between neural, endocrine and immune system with respect to pain, and the evidence for multidimensional profiles in patient populations

6. Be able to interpret models of pain (specifically Inputs/Outputs and Allostasis models) that consider multiple dimensions, explain clinical findings to a patient within the context of these models, and plan treatments accordingly.

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