howdy - perhaps thats was misleading, i'm a computational person as well and the same thing comes to mind when i say modeling.
we surgically perform ligations of the T5 and T6 spinal nerves of rats - which puts them into a allodynic pain states (hyper sensitivity). this, was found to be analogous to the chronic pain state - so what we do then is collect sections of their dorsal root ganglions (drg's) and load 'em up on affymetrix gene chips. compared to a sham animal and ipsilateral and contralateral sections of the drg, we can see general patterns of specific and classes of genes (out of about 10,000 on the chip) that are up or down regulated to some great degree (something arbitrary like 2-fold). then further research can be done on the expression patterns of these genes by using quantitative taq-man, QRT-PCR, westerns, and immunostaining. we've found that the chronic pain state has a pathology analogous to a neurodegenerative disease. if you like what you read stay tuned for the real deal in j.neuro soon ...😉
ok - that was probably a lot more than you asked for - but thats that. more of a molecular approach. as a computational biologist, i've been seperately trying to simulate (on a computer) some of the conditions of the pain state on a global level with some of the cool powerful computers we have here, but its quite a bit beyond me. i just visited the imaging research area in merck and they have some new semi-secret fancy schmancy toy that can do some amazing stuff with resolution/real time analysis and precision imaging. anyway - enough out of me. cheers.
-jot
What a talented group.
