From movement to pain: a tribute to professor James P. Lund

This tribute article to Professor James P. Lund stems from 6 of the presentations delivered at the July 1, 2008, symposium that honored 3 "giants" in orofacial neuroscience: B. J. Sessle, A. G. Hannam, and J. P. Lund. It was noted that soon after his training as a dentist in Australia, Jim Lund became interested in research. At the time he decided to do a PhD, there was a lot of discussion about how rhythmic movements were programmed. The early belief, based on Sherrington's studies of motor systems, was that these movements were simply an alternating series of reflexes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some still shared this belief, whereas others favored Graham Brown's hypothesis that repetitive movements were centrally programmed and did not depend on reflexes triggered by sensory inputs. There was no strong evidence then for either scenario except for the rhythmic movements of respiration. Lund's pioneering work during his PhD proved the existence of a central pattern generator (CPG) for mastication in the brainstem. Since then he has been interested in understanding how CPGs function and how sensory feedback works to adjust the motor patterns that they produce. Sections in this tribute article to Lund are written by some of his close collaborators and reflect the evolution of his work throughout the years. The first 4 presentations in this article (by K.-G. Westberg, D. McFarland, A. Kolta, and C. Stohler) highlight various aspects of these interests, and the final 2 presentations (by J. Feine and A. Woda) focus especially on clinical aspects of Lund's interests. The last section of this article is a final commentary from Professor Lund.