Editor’s note: IASP will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024. Even though the anniversary is still a few years away, it already has us thinking about the history of IASP and the evolution of pain research over the past five decades. So we are providing a series of podcasts that will cover both of those topics, featuring senior leaders in the field who have made major contributions to pain research and care, including those with major roles at IASP.
Our latest such podcast features Johan W.S. Vlaeyen, PhD. Dr. Vlaeyen is a full professor at the Universities of Leuven (Belgium) and Maastricht (Netherlands). His main research interests/expertise are the behavioral, cognitive, and motivational mechanisms underlying the transition from common acute aversive sensations (pain, fatigue, tinnitus) to chronic bodily symptoms and disability. His experimental work includes research on the acquisition of fear of pain through direct experience, observational learning, and verbal-symbolic learning. He and his team study the role of unpredictability on the generalization of bodily symptoms and illness behaviors, with special attention to the competition between avoidance versus reward-seeking tendencies. Dr. Vlaeyen highly values translational research, and he and his team have developed customized cognitive-behavioral management strategies for individuals suffering chronic bodily symptoms and utilized replicated single-case experimental designs to evaluate the effects of these interventions.
In the podcast below, Dr. Vlaeyen speaks with PRF Correspondent Guillaume Christe, a PhD student at Haute École de Santé Vaud (HESAV), Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss his career and his contributions to the development of the fear-avoidance model of pain. The podcast is also available on Spotify here and on Apple Podcasts here. (To listen to other PRF podcasts, visit our podcasts homepage on Spotify here and on Apple Podcasts here).
PRF Correspondent Guillaume Christe is a PhD student at Haute École de Santé Vaud (HESAV), Lausanne, Switzerland.