College of Dentistry | University of Florida

Donald D. Price

Donald D. Price

Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery

Division of Neuroscience
Professor

Phone:352-273-6686
E-mail:dprice@dental.ufl.edu

  • Ph.D., University of California, Davis, 1969

Main Interests

My main research interests are concerned with 1) mechanisms of pain in pain conditions such as fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome, 2) biological and psychological mechanisms of placebo analgesia, and 3) the role of gender, sex, and cultural factors in pain experience. Techniques of brain imaging, psychophysics, and psychological testing are used in research projects related to these topics. One ongoing project is to investigate pain sensory abnormalities of patients with fibromyalgia and to determine whether there are alterations in their endogenous pain modulatory mechanisms. Another project seeks to determine the psychological and neural mechanisms that underlie irritable bowel syndrome. Brain imaging is used to determine underlying neural mechanisms of visceral and cutaneous hyperalgesia in IBS patients.These mechanisms are investigated both in Persian Gulf war veterans with IBS and in age/sex matched IBS patients that are not veterans. Several ongoing studies of placebo analgesia seek to characterize the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms that contribute to placebo analgesia and the external conditions under which placebo analgesia can be greatly enhanced.Plans are underway to conduct a neuroimaging study of placebo analgesia in IBS patients. Finally, several studies are ongoing that investigate the relative contribution of sex vs. the social learning associated with being a male or female (gender) in the reported differences between men and women with respect to pain perception. Laboratory psychophysical methods and manipulations of gender-role constructs are employed to determine the relative contributions of first-order biology vs. gender roles in pain perception.

Publications

  • Verne, G.N., Robinson, M. E., Price, D. D. Hypersensitivity to visceral and cutaneous pain in the irritable bowel syndrome. Pain, 93, 7-14, (2001).
  • Staud, R., Vierck, C. J., Cannon, R. L., Mauderli, A. P., and Price, D. D.,Abnormal sensitization and temporal summation of second pain (wind-up) in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome, Pain, 91(1,2), 165-176, (2001).
  • Price, D. D. Psychological and neural mechanisms of the affective dimension of pain.Science, 288 (5472): 1769-1772, 2000.
  • Price, D.D. Psychological Mechanisms of Pain and Analgesia. IASP Press, 1999, 250 pp.
    Rainville, P., Duncan, G. H., Price, D. D., Carrier, B., and Bushnell, M. C., Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex. Science 277: 968-971, 1997.
  • Rainville, P, Hofbauer, R., Paus, T., Duncan, G. H., M. C. Bushnell, and Price, D. D., Cerebral mechanisms of hypnotic induction and suggestion. J. Cognitive Neuroscience 1999; 11(1): 110-125.
  • Mayer, D. J., Holt, J., Mao, J., Lu, J., and Price, D. D. The inhibition of nitric oxide-activated poly(ADP-ribose) synthetase attenuates transynaptic alteration of spinal cord dorsal horn neurons and morphine tolerance in the rat, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sciences, 1999; 96(14): 7731-7736.

back to top