Chronic pain is one of the largest medical health problems in the developed world affecting 1 in 5 adults and costing society hundreds of millions of pounds per annum in care, treatment and days lost from work. Treatment is poor and many sufferers are left with unmanaged pain that significantly reduces their quality of life. Pain research within the NDA currently falls into 4 major areas: The Pain Imaging Neuroscience Group investigates CNS nociceptive processing mechanisms that lead to acute and chronic pain experiences, as well as analgesic mechanisms induced either behaviourally or pharmacologically (see the FMRIB section on pain); The Systematic Review group has a long history of performing analyses of analgesic drug efficacy from primary literature and pharmaceutical databases; The Paediatric Pain group uses a range of non-invasive tools to explore the problem of pain in babies and the developing CNS: The Oxford Persistent Post Operative Pain Study (OxPPOPS) explores factors (genetic, psychological and physiological) pre-operatively that predict the development of persistent pain states post-operatively (hernia repair and caesarean section).