APS2024: Annual Scientific Meeting Travel Grant Recipient Report

Author name: Erin MacIntyre

Author biography:
Erin MacIntyre is a PhD candidate at the Persistent Pain Research Group at the University of South Australia. Her PhD focuses on the links between pain and visual perception in people with knee osteoarthritis.

Author contact details: erin.macintyre@mymail.unisa.edu.au

Changing Outcomes with Novel Interventions

I was very grateful to be awarded an APS travel grant, which allowed me to travel to Darwin to present my PhD work during the “Changing Outcomes with Novel Interventions” free paper session. As a final-year PhD candidate, this financial support is invaluable to my future career, and facilitated my attendance at the conference. Attending the 2024 ASM allowed me to not only share my work with a receptive audience, but also network with a fantastic group of passionate academics, pain researchers, and clinicians. 

I presented my systematic review, which explored the influence of threat on visual perception, affordances, and behaviour. Our meta-analysis indicates threatening objects/environments are visually exaggerated, and that threat reduces affordances, or perceived action-capabilities. Together, this has implications for the efficacy of current treatments (e.g., exposure therapy), as well as paves the way for new treatments (e.g., using virtual reality to train this bias). However, the links between visual perception and affordance outcomes and behaviour remains elusive, which is a gap in the existing literature. During and after the free paper session, I was asked many insightful questions about the implications of this research on pain populations. It was wonderful to see that my work was well-received by the audience, and I really valued the many conversations about my work during and since the conference.

This engaged and collegiate atmosphere was present throughout the conference. I enjoyed attending the topical session “From Theory to the Coalface: A hands-on symposium exploring cognitive bias modification, predictive processing and graded sensorimotor retraining”. It was fascinating to hear Professor Louise Sharpe discuss her cognitive bias retraining program. Given that the program has moderate effects on pain, and is low burden for practitioners and participants, it shows great translational promise. I’m excited to see it further tested and integrated into clinical practice! In addition to the speakers themselves, the audience also contributed to the discussion, prompting further discussion about the topics.

In line with the IASP Global Year theme, I also enjoyed the conference’s focus on sex and gender disparities in pain. Dr Charlotte Elder’s opening plenary was fantastic. I enjoyed her honesty and her perspective as a clinician. Her calls for further research into the conservative management of persistent pelvic pain were echoed by Dr Jane Chalmers, who won the Rising Star Award and gave a fantastic plenary on the final day of the conference. As a female early career researcher, it was empowering to watch two women talk openly about these topics.

It was a pleasure to attend the ASM in Darwin. Thank you again to the APS for your support and for the fantastic conference programme. I can’t wait to see everyone again next year in Melbourne!

Declaration: Erin MacIntyre’s PhD work was supported by a University of South Australia Post Graduate Award (USAPA) and by a National Health & Medical Research Council Project Grant to A/Prof Tasha R Stanton (ID1161634).