{"id":237487,"date":"2026-05-20T10:08:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/scientists-may-have-found-the-brains-switch-for-chronic-pain"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:08:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:08:58","slug":"scientists-may-have-found-the-brains-switch-for-chronic-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/scientists-may-have-found-the-brains-switch-for-chronic-pain","title":{"rendered":"Scientists may have found the brain\u2019s switch for chronic pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-may-have-found-the-brains-switch-for-chronic-pain.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists may have found the brain\u2019s \u201cpain switch\u201d\u2014and how to turn it off. New research from the University of Colorado Boulder points to a little-known brain circuit that may determine whether short-term pain fades away or becomes a long-lasting problem. The findings suggest that this pathway plays a key role in turning temporary pain into chronic pain that can persist for months or even years.<\/p>\n<p>The study, conducted in animals and published in the Journal of Neuroscience, focused on a region called the caudal granular insular cortex (CGIC). Researchers found that shutting down this circuit can both prevent chronic pain from developing and stop it after it has already begun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur paper used a variety of state-of-the art methods to define the specific brain circuit crucial for deciding for pain to become chronic and telling the spinal cord to carry out this instruction,\u201d said senior author Linda Watkins, distinguished professor of behavioral neuroscience in the College of Arts and Sciences. \u201cIf this crucial decision maker is silenced, chronic pain does not occur. If it is already ongoing, chronic pain melts away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists may have found the brain\u2019s \u201cpain switch\u201d\u2014and how to turn it off. New research from the University of Colorado Boulder points to a little-known brain circuit that may determine whether short-term pain fades away or becomes a long-lasting problem. The findings suggest that this pathway plays a key role in turning temporary pain into [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237487","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\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}