Pain is something we all experience. It’s our body’s way of warning us about danger. For example, when you touch something hot, your body reacts quickly to protect you.
This kind of short-term pain helps keep us safe. After the pain fades, your body heals, and you learn to avoid that danger in the future.
But for many people, pain doesn’t go away—even after the injury heals. This is called chronic pain. In the United States alone, around 50 million people live with pain that lasts for months or years.
This kind of pain isn’t helpful. It can affect everyday life and make even simple tasks difficult. Scientists are now working to understand why chronic pain happens and how to stop it.
Dr. J. Nicholas Betley, a brain researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has been studying this issue with other scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Scripps Research Institute. They’ve found something important in a part of the brain called the parabrachial nucleus. This area helps the brain deal with pain, hunger, fear, and thirst.
They discovered that a special group of brain cells, called Y1R neurons, becomes active when chronic pain is present. These neurons are like an engine that keeps running even after the car is parked. Even when the body is healed, the brain keeps sending pain signals. This could explain why some people continue to feel pain after an injury or surgery.
To better understand this, the scientists studied the brains of animals using a method that let them watch brain cell activity in real time. They noticed that Y1R neurons didn’t just react to a quick injury—they stayed active during ongoing pain, showing what is called “tonic activity.”
This research started when Betley noticed something unusual. He realized that when he was very hungry, his chronic pain seemed to go away. That led to more research by his team. They found that other basic needs—like thirst or fear—can also reduce pain. When you are in danger or desperate for food or water, your brain pushes pain aside to help you survive.
The brain uses a chemical called NPY to do this. NPY tells the Y1R neurons to quiet down so you can focus on more urgent needs. It’s like the brain has a switch that turns off pain when survival becomes more important.
Interestingly, the scientists also found that these pain-related neurons are scattered throughout the brain, not grouped together. This means the brain may use many different circuits to manage pain. This scattered pattern might help the brain control different types of pain in different situations.
Dr. Betley hopes this discovery will help doctors find better ways to treat pain. Right now, many people suffer from chronic pain without a clear cause, and their doctors may not know what to do. But if we can focus on brain circuits like the Y1R neurons, we may find new treatments that work better.
This research could also help scientists create tests to measure chronic pain in the brain. And it supports the idea that behavior and lifestyle—like exercise or meditation—can help reduce pain by changing how the brain works.
The most exciting part of this research is that it shows the brain’s pain system is flexible. If we can learn how to control it, we might be able to give relief to millions of people living with chronic pain—not just with medicine, but also through behavior, therapy, and better understanding of how the brain works.
If you care about pain, please read studies about how to manage your back pain, and Krill oil could improve muscle health in older people.
For more health information, please see recent studies about how to live pain-free with arthritis, and results showing common native American plant may help reduce diarrhea and pain.
The study is published in Nature.
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