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SARS-CoV-2 Interacts With Sensory Neurons

By now it’s clear: COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, includes symptoms that invoke the nervous system in myriad ways – from the acute symptoms of sore throat, […]

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Chronic Pain or Current Pain: What Do Changes in Default Mode Network Functional Connectivity Actually Reflect?

The brains of patients with different chronic pain conditions, including fibromyalgia, often show differences in resting-state functional connectivity, compared to pain-free controls. Researchers have often interpreted this to mean that […]

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A Potassium Channel Mutation Drives Resilience to Labor Pain

The American actress Danica McKellar, best known for her role as Winnie Cooper in the hit television series The Wonder Years, once said: “My hope is to go fully natural […]

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A Rapidly Adapting Understanding of Touch

Meissner corpuscles, receptors for vibration and pressure in the hairless skin of mammals, were first discovered over 165 years ago. However, the function of these structures in touch perception has […]

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Calls to Rename “Pain Catastrophizing” Backed by International Patient-Researcher Partnership

Editor’s note: Eight young pain researchers were recently selected to provide news articles and other content as part of PRF’s Correspondents program, which provides a science communications training experience. In […]

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A Persistence of Sex Bias in Preclinical Pain Research

Even though chronic pain disproportionately affects women, preclinical pain research has relied heavily on data from male rodents. With increasing recognition that males and females process pain differently, some have […]

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The Parabrachial Nucleus Takes the Pain Limelight

Nociceptive signals entering the brain via the spinothalamic pathway allow us to detect the location and intensity of a painful sensation. But, at least as importantly, nociceptive inputs also reach […]

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Analgesia From General Anesthetics: A “Pain-Off” Switch in the Central Amygdala

General anesthetics used in surgeries are well known to cause loss of consciousness. This has often been assumed to account for the ability of these drugs to also produce analgesia. […]

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A Mislabeled Line? Well-Known Itch Afferents Can Code Pain, Too

How the nervous system encodes pain and itch – two distinct percepts – is hotly debated. A new study challenges the long-standing labeled line theory for itch, which argues that […]

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A 10-Year Anniversary: Reflecting on the Declaration of Montreal

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on RELIEF, PRF’s companion website for patients and the wider public, and is being republished here for PRF readers.   On September 3, 2010, […]

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