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Pleasure or pain? He maps the neural circuits that decide


The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch.

A recipient of numerous awards for his accomplishments, Abdus-Saboor was named to the inaugural class of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Freeman Hrabowski scholars last May. Quanta spoke with Abdus-Saboor about his penchant for starting over in science, his zebra fish eureka moment and his hopes for a newly imported naked mole rat colony. What if we could turn on these neurons with a skin cream to improve mental health — say, to offset the harm caused by social isolation or to treat anxiety or depression?

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