About Pain Research

An increased understanding of the basic mechanisms of pain will have profound implications for the development of future medicines. Investigators working to develop the future generation of pain medications is to formulate compounds that will prevent pain signals from being amplified by the nervous system or to block certain steps in the pain pathway, especially in conditions when there is no injury or trauma.

Rather than viewing pain as simply a symptom of trauma, infection, inflammation, or surgery, we now see it as a discrete disease entity - one that fundamentally alters the entire nervous system. In a major recent advance, neuroimaging tools have allowed us to peer inside the human brain in ways once only dreamed about – unlocking mysteries of where pain is perceived and processed, how it affects the brain, and how it can act to change our thoughts and emotions.