✓ AeonScience & Systems
Why cutting pain nerves doesn't stop chronic pain
UCSF pain researcher Allan Basbaum has spent his career showing that pain is a brain process, not merely an injury signal from the body.
Pain cannot exist without the brain: the body sends a harmful signal, but only the brain converts it into felt pain. UCSF's Allan Basbaum has dedicated his career to mapping this mechanism.
Nerve-cutting once seemed the logical fix for chronic pain, but patients' pain often returned. Basbaum focuses on blocking pain at its peripheral origin, before it ever reaches the brain.
- 78
- Researcher age
- 50 years studying pain physiology
- Career span
- 2000, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York
- ER incident
Why it mattersBlocking pain at its origin rather than in the brain could open new treatments for the millions living with chronic pain conditions.
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