Head of the Pain Genetics Lab, McGill University, Canada.

Sex Differences in the Genetic and Cellular Mediation of Pain (download presentation here )
Plenary Panel 1: Pursuing Excellence in Research through Gendered Innovations
Discussant
Parallel Session 2: Workshop on Gendered Innovations in Research

Jeffrey S. Mogil is currently the E.P. Taylor Professor of Pain Studies and the Canada Research Chair in the Genetics of Pain.  Dr. Mogil has made seminal contributions to the field of pain genetics and is the author of many major reviews of the subject, including an edited book, The Genetics of Pain (IASP Press, 2004).  He is also a recognized authority in the fields of sex differences in pain and analgesia, and pain testing methods in the laboratory mouse.  Dr. Mogil is the author of over 195 journal articles and book chapters since 1992, and has given over 280 invited lectures in that same period.  

He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Neal E. Miller New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, the John C. Liebeskind Early Career Scholar Award from the American Pain Society, the Patrick D. Wall Young Investigator Award from the International Association for the Study of Pain, the Early Career Award from the Canadian Pain Society, the SGV Award from the Swiss Laboratory Animal Science Association, and the Frederick W.L. Kerr Basic Science Research Award from the American Pain Society.  He currently serves as a Section Editor (Neurobiology) at the journal, Pain, and a Councilor at IASP, and was the chair of the Scientific Program Committee of the 13th World Congress on Pain.

Summary of talk for Gender Summit 6 Asia-Pacific

Pain researchers have now come to some consensus regarding the existence of small quantitative sex differences in the sensitivity to and tolerance of pain in humans. However, broad conclusions regarding the existence and direction of such sex differences are complicated by emerging evidence from laboratory animals that sex differences interact with genetic background; even the direction of sex differences may depend on genetic factors. In addition to these quantitative sex differences, evidence is rapidly emerging that the sexes may differ qualitatively in their neural mediation of pain and analgesia. That is, different neural circuits, transmitters, receptors and genes may be relevant to pain processing in males and females. I will present new data from our laboratory demonstrating that the specific cellular and neurochemical mediation of chronic pain processing in the spinal cord in male and female mice are radically different