With the presentation title ‘Perceptual trickery to shape our experiences’, clinical pain neuroscientist Associate Professor Tasha Stanton is sure to hold attention at the November APA Victorian Branch Breakfast.

The clinically trained physiotherapist studies the role that the brain plays in pain, exploring how information from myriad sources can shape a person’s perception of their body and environment.

Her investigations focus on the neural underpinnings of pain in a unique way—by manipulating our sense of reality.

‘I’ve always been intrigued by why we experience what we experience. I’m looking to understand why we have pain and why it, sometimes, doesn’t go away,’ she says.

Tasha is the Osteoarthritis Research Theme Lead for IIMPACT in Health at The University of South Australia (UniSA).

Her work spans both experimental and clinical pain and she is particularly interested in the role that pain education and activity play in recovery from chronic pain, specifically for the treatment of osteoarthritis.

In exploring the contribution of multisensory input to the experience of osteoarthritis pain, traditionally considered due to bone- on-bone and wear-and-tear processes, she uses mediated and virtual reality (VR) to shape experiences and then identify therapeutic possibilities.

Her talk on using virtual and mediated reality in research coincides with the Branch’s first online breakfast.

People can attend the live-streamed, virtual presentation on 20 November. The APA Victorian Branch Awards and the recipient of the state’s COVID Hero Award will also be announced during the event.

Perceptual trickery involves taking advantage of cognitive and sensory contributors to the experience of pain and the experiences of things around  us, such as the environment, and using this knowledge to reduce pain and/or promote engagement in evidence-based treatment, such as exercise.

To take advantage of these contributors to our bodily experiences, we also have to better understand what these contributors are.

‘Why do you feel that riding up a hill is really hard on one day, and yet the next day, you could ride the exact same hill on your bike, and it feels different?

'What I want to explore in my talk is the idea or assumption that what we experience is objective reality.

‘A lot of times, we assume that whatever we experience is merely a readout of the sensory information coming in. And in truth, what we find is that we all actually experience our own unique reality, so to speak.’

The resultant experience, Tasha adds, is based on complex processes that involve integration of sensory information with our past experiences, which includes our thoughts and beliefs; thus, pain doesn’t solely reflect the state of our tissues, and is not just reflective of damage or injury.

‘Rather, it’s this complex process that involves taking in numerous sources of information, as well as the sensory input that’s coming from the body to create a perception of pain. And that’s where perceptual trickery comes in.

'If we know that there’s many different things contributing to pain, it means there are many different potential targets and numerous ways that we might be able to impact the pain experience.

'These might include cognitive targets, such as altering someone’s deeply held beliefs about pain or they might include sensory targets, such as manipulating the available sensory information.

'In both cases, we are taking advantage of innate systems that exist in the body to help re-shape the pain experience.’

With more than a decade of experience in the areas of sensory modulation and pain, Tasha cemented her interest in clinical pain neuroscience when working with chronic pain scientist Professor Lorimer Moseley after completing her PhD.

Her research team is affiliated with the Lorimer-led Body in Mind Research group, which is also based at UniSA.

For her PhD, she studied low back pain and clinical prediction under the guidance of Professor Chris Maher, Professor Jane Latimer and Professor Mark Hancock at the University of Sydney in 2010.

Initially it was treatment of her own sporting injuries that attracted Tasha to physiotherapy.

She graduated in 2002 from the University of Alberta, Canada, followed by two years of clinical work at Millard Health Centre, a worker compensation rehabilitation centre, returning to the university to pursue her Master of Rehabilitation Science in spinal biomechanics with Professor Greg Kawchuk.

Tasha’s work is cutting edge, attracting multiple national and international accolades.

She is a National Health and Medical Research Council Career Development Fellow (2019–2021) and has received more than $3.4 million in competitive research funding.

With more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, the researcher doesn’t concede to academic pressure of publish or perish.

For Tasha, having time to think is essential for real scientific breakthroughs, which forces her to consider projects carefully and chose only what piques her interest.

‘I am incredibly appreciative for the public funding I receive, so I think it is essential that I put my time into research projects that are asking important questions—either basic questions that help us understand the mechanistic underpinning of how experiences are created or clinical questions that can help improve our treatment of people in pain.’

In support of fellow researchers wanting to share news of their studies to a wider audience, Tasha leads a seminar program called CREW (Communicating to the Real World) that highlights ways to communicate research to media outlets.

ABC Radio National acknowledges her as one of Australia’s Top 5 under 40 Science Communicators.

‘It’s important to not only do the research but to also share why it is important and how it can influence treatment and thus potentially make a difference to people’s lives.’

This means her team is constantly ‘doing our best to get technology to catch up’. 

‘We have really high-tech systems where we can very carefully control all the different parameters, and that’s really important for research because we want to be as rigorous and thorough as we can.

'But of course, anytime that you have complexity within the technology, it means that it often precludes its use clinically.

'Thankfully, like computers, VR technology is getting cheaper and more accessible to use, which means the pace will quicken and hopefully more VR possibilities can be clinic friendly.’

As for perception of trickery, Tasha encourages colleagues to keep a sense of wonder and awe at the complexity of humans.

‘Pain is an incredibly complex thing and our experiences are not straightforward. And this is a great thing.

'It means we can explore numerous possibilities for treatment targets to meet our overarching goal of helping people in pain get back to their lives.’

Associate Professor Tasha Stanton is the Osteoarthritis Research Theme Lead for IIMPACT in Health at The University of South Australia. She has been a keynote or invited speaker at more than 80 national and international conferences and has received multiple awards for her research and media communication.

>> Visit australian.physio/pd to register for the live-streamed end-of-year Victorian Branch Breakfast to be held at 7am on 20 November.