{"id":223120,"date":"2025-10-09T00:05:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T05:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/its-all-in-your-head-select-neurons-in-the-brainstem-may-hold-the-key-to-treating-chronic-pain"},"modified":"2025-10-09T00:05:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T05:05:26","slug":"its-all-in-your-head-select-neurons-in-the-brainstem-may-hold-the-key-to-treating-chronic-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/its-all-in-your-head-select-neurons-in-the-brainstem-may-hold-the-key-to-treating-chronic-pain","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s all in your head: Select neurons in the brainstem may hold the key to treating chronic pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/its-all-in-your-head-select-neurons-in-the-brainstem-may-hold-the-key-to-treating-chronic-pain3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Acute or short-lived pain, despite its bad reputation, is usually a lifesaver. It acts as a transient negative sensory experience that helps us avoid danger. Touch a hot stove, stub a toe, or bonk your head on a low branch, and the nervous system cues up an \u201cOw!\u201d Over time, the sting fades, the wound heals, but the lesson sticks.<\/p>\n<p>Chronic pain is different; the alarm keeps blaring long after the fire is out, and then the pain itself becomes the problem. Nearly 50 million people in the United States live with <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/chronic+pain\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">chronic pain<\/a>, an invisible and often untreatable condition that can linger for decades. \u201cIt\u2019s not just an injury that won\u2019t heal,\u201d says neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania J. Nicholas Betley, \u201cit\u2019s a brain input that\u2019s become sensitized and hyperactive, and determining how to quiet that input could lead to better treatments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, research led by Betley and collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh and Scripps Research Institute has identified a key to regulating long-term pain states: a group of cells called Y1 receptor (Y1R)-expressing <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/neurons\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">neurons<\/a> in the brainstem\u2019s lateral <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/parabrachial+nucleus\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">parabrachial nucleus<\/a> (lPBN). These neurons are activated during enduring pain states, but they also integrate information about hunger, fear and thirst, allowing for <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/pain+signals\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">pain signals<\/a> to be modulated by other <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/brain+circuits\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">brain circuits<\/a> signaling more urgent needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Acute or short-lived pain, despite its bad reputation, is usually a lifesaver. It acts as a transient negative sensory experience that helps us avoid danger. Touch a hot stove, stub a toe, or bonk your head on a low branch, and the nervous system cues up an \u201cOw!\u201d Over time, the sting fades, the wound [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}