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Brain circuit identified that gives physical pain its emotional sting, explaining why some hurts linger as suffering | The breakthrough challenges our beliefs about how we process pain and may transform chronic pain treatments.
Scientists have discovered a brain circuit that gives pain its emotional sting, explaining why some hurts linger as suffering. The breakthrough challenges our beliefs about how we process pain and may transform chronic pain treatments.
“For decades, the prevailing view was that the brain processes sensory and emotional aspects of pain through separate pathways,” said Sung Han, PhD, associate professor at Salk and the study’s corresponding author. When these CGRP neurons were genetically silenced, or switched off, in mice, they still felt pain from, for example, heat and pressure, but didn’t seem emotionally bothered by it or try to avoid it in the future. Because the researchers have identified a pathway that also connects to emotional centers in the brain, like the amygdala, it may also be involved in threat sensitivity and fear, hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD).
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