Bridging Headache and Orofacial Pain: Diagnostic, Therapeutic, and Research Synergies

Fernando Exposto, DDS, MSc, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Section for Orofacial Pain and Jaw Function, Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is a clinician-scientist whose research focuses on the mechanisms underlying chronic orofacial pain, temporomandibular disorders (TMD), primary headaches, and referred pain, combining clinical and translational approaches to improve diagnosis and treatment. He has received several international awards for his research, supervises PhD and Master's students, and is an invited speaker at leading international conferences and educational courses in orofacial pain and headache disorders. He collaborates with research groups across Europe, North America, Asia, and South America, contributing to advances in pain research and clinical practice.

Sait Ashina, MD, FAHS is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Assistant Professor Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. He is a Director of Comprehensive Headache Center at BIDMC. Dr. Ashina graduated from the University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Health Sciences, Denmark. Dr. Ashina also served as a member of the International Headache Society headache classification subcommittee for the latest edition of the International Classification of Headache Disorders. Dr. Ashina currently serves as a Honorary Secretary of the International Headache Society. He is Associate Editor of Cephalalgia, Frontiers in Neurology and BMC Neurology. He is a recipient of the Enrico Greppi Award for excellence in headache research. Dr. Ashina is currently involved in several research projects at Harvard Medical School. His research interests include epidemiology of headache and chronic pain, quantitative sensory testing, human pain models, brain imaging and structural brain lesions in migraine, migraine and vestibular dysfunction, implication of photophobia in pathophysiology and treatment of migraine. He is an investigator of clinical trials in migraine, including clinical trials involving novel treatments in migraine.

Daniela A. G. Gonçalves, DDS, MSc, PhD, is a Professor at São Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil. Her research focuses on temporomandibular disorders, orofacial pain, and their relationship with primary headaches, particularly migraine, with an emphasis on diagnosis, comorbidity, and underlying pain mechanisms. She is actively involved in research, postgraduate education, and international scientific collaborations. She is a member of the IADR, IASP, IHS, and SBDOF and contributes to international initiatives aimed at advancing the classification and assessment of orofacial pain, including the revision of the International Classification of Orofacial Pain (ICOP 2.0) and the INfORM/IADR network.

Arne May is a Professor of Neurology in the Department of Systems Neuroscience at the University of Hamburg and head of the headache outpatient clinic and the UKE Facial Pain Center of the University clinic of Hamburg. His major research interests are the basic mechanisms of facial and headpain, the chronification of pain and plasticity within the human brain. The work of his group involves human imaging studies in primary headache as well as experimental studies of trigeminovascular nociception, with the aim of understanding how to modulate facial and headache syndromes and chronicity of pain. Prior to his position at the University of Hamburg, Professor May was a clinician and conducted research into pain and headache syndromes at the University of Regensburg. Prior to this he completed his residency in the Neurology Department of the University of Essen, followed by post-doctorate studies at the Institute of Neurology in London with Peter Goadsby. He has published more than 300 original and review articles with an h-index of 93 (scholar google) and has been the Editor of Cephalalgia and Cephalalgia Reports from 2016-202