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pain

This illustration shows a brain wrapped in a scarf and covered in snowflakes.

·February 21, 2026·6 min read

How Your Brain Knows It’s Cold

How do we feel the frost? Scientists have captured the first atomic-level images of the body’s "cold sensor" in action, revealing how menthol tricks our brain.

This shows a woman holding her head in pain. She is surrounded by immune cells.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·February 20, 2026·7 min read

Why Pain Lingers Longer in Women

It’s not in your head; it’s in your immune system. Scientists discover the biological "off-switch" that explains why chronic pain persists longer for women.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain

·December 8, 2025·4 min read

Nicotine Withdrawal Makes Smokers More Sensitive to Pain

A new study shows that abstinent smokers experience heightened pain sensitivity linked to altered activity in specific brain regions. Compared to nonsmokers, abstinent smokers required more postoperative pain relief—especially opioids—and their pain sensitivity increased the longer they remained nicotine-free.

This shows a person holding their head while watching a movie.

Featured Neuroscience Pain

·November 27, 2025·6 min read

Watching Pain on Screen Can Make Your Body Flinch

Watching someone experience pain on screen activates your own brain’s touch-processing system in a highly organized, body-specific way. Visual regions of the brain contain hidden maps of the body that allow sight alone to trigger sensations normally produced by physical contact.

Featured Neuroscience

·November 20, 2025·10 min read

Brain Releases Hidden Kinase to Supercharge Pain and Learning

New research reveals that neurons release a little-understood extracellular kinase called VLK to strengthen synaptic connections, providing a missing piece in how the nervous system adapts during learning and pain. The kinase phosphorylates EphB receptors outside the cell, which recruits NMDA receptors and amplifies synaptic signaling.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain

·November 7, 2025·5 min read

Nano Tech Helps CBD Quiet Pain at the Source

A new study shows that CBD delivered through a nano-micelle system can cross the blood–brain barrier and produce rapid neuropathic pain relief. The formulation, called CBD-IN, helped mice within 30 minutes and avoided the motor and cognitive side effects often seen with conventional pain drugs.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain

·October 23, 2025·6 min read

Pain Resilience, Not Pain Itself, Predicts How Active People Stay

A new study reveals that how people think about and cope with chronic pain is more important than the pain itself in determining physical activity levels. Researchers found that individuals with higher pain resilience — the ability to maintain positive functioning despite pain — were significantly more active than those with lower resilience.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain

·October 8, 2025·8 min read

Hunger, Fear, and the Brain’s Hidden Switch to Turn Off Chronic Pain

Chronic pain affects nearly 50 million Americans, yet new research reveals the brain may have an internal switch that can turn it down. Scientists identified a group of neurons in the brainstem that regulate long-term pain by integrating signals related to hunger, fear, and thirst.

This shows a woman holding chocolate and a table with pain pills.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain

·October 8, 2025·6 min read

Why Comfort Food Feels Like Medicine for People in Chronic Pain

A new study reveals that more than two-thirds of people living with chronic pain turn to comfort foods—especially chocolate—for emotional relief and distraction during flare-ups. Eating provides temporary pleasure and even mild pain relief, likely due to biological effects of high-calorie foods on the brain’s reward and pain systems.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain Psychology

·October 2, 2025·6 min read

Psilocybin Rewire Brain Circuits Tied to Pain and Mood

New research shows that psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, can reduce both chronic pain and pain-related depression by modulating brain circuits rather than acting at the site of injury. In mouse studies, a single dose provided pain relief and mood benefits lasting nearly two weeks by targeting the anterior cingulate cortex.

This shows a person playing a guitar and a brain.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain

·September 28, 2025·6 min read

Musicians’ Brains Show Remarkable Resistance to Pain

A new study finds that musicians experience pain differently than non-musicians, thanks to how their brains adapt through years of training. While pain usually shrinks the brain’s motor maps and increases discomfort, musicians showed stable motor maps and reported less pain after induced hand soreness.

Autism Featured Neuroscience

·September 16, 2025·8 min read

Opioid Use in Pregnancy Not Linked to Autism or ADHD Risk

A large-scale study analyzing over a million births in Sweden found no evidence that prescribed opioid pain medications during pregnancy cause autism or ADHD in children. While earlier data suggested a potential link, those associations largely disappeared after accounting for genetics, parental mental health, and shared family environment.