Pain

Recent articles

Tic-tac-toe board with pills representing x’s and o’s.

Basic pain research ‘is not working’: Q&A with Steven Prescott and Stéphanie Ratté

Prescott and Ratté critique the clinical relevance of preclinical studies in the field and highlight areas for improvement.

By Sydney Wyatt
18 April 2025 | 7 min read
Research image of neurons in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (right, in green) sending signals to cells in the pontine nucleus (left, in yellow) to quell pain.

Cerebellar circuit may convert expected pain relief into real thing

The newly identified circuit taps into the brain’s opioid system to provide a top-down form of pain relief.

By Angie Voyles Askham
24 July 2024 | 6 min read

Robots boost data consistency in rodent studies reliant on mechanical, optogenetic stimulation

Two new devices take experimenter variation out of the equation, the lead investigators say.

By Calli McMurray
15 May 2024 | 0 min watch

The question of regeneration—an excerpt from ‘Periphery: How Your Nervous System Predicts and Protects Against Disease’

In his recent book, Moses Chao makes the case that the peripheral nervous system can warn of future illnesses.

By Moses V. Chao
26 April 2024 | 7 min read
Research image of presynapses on sensory neurons in fruit flies.

UBE3A’s link to synaptic pruning bolstered by fly study

Increasing or reducing the levels of the UBE3A gene, which is associated with autism and autism-related syndromes, results in altered patterns of synaptic pruning — a process that snips away brain cell connections.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
28 September 2023 | 5 min read
A hand reaches from above to add a pill to a stack that is resting against the x-axis of a graph.

Going on Trial: Epidiolex for autism; arbaclofen tests; pain monitoring

This month’s issue of Going on Trial takes a sneak peek at some early null results from a small trial of a cannabidiol-based drug for autism, among other recent drug developments.

By Peter Hess
30 May 2023 | 7 min read
Research video of a zebrafish larva (zoomed in on the gut) being given glucose.

On the periphery: Thinking ‘outside the brain’ offers new ideas about autism

Neuronal alterations outside the brain may help to explain a host of the condition’s characteristic traits, including sensory changes, gut problems and motor differences.

By Sarah DeWeerdt
13 April 2023 | 20 min read
Woman is holding her fingers to her forehead in pain.

Pain keeps autistic women and girls home from work, school

More autistic women and girls report daily pain than do men and boys with the condition.

By Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky
4 May 2021 | 3 min read
Young woman during birth.

Epidurals linked to slightly higher autism odds, but connection is unclear

Women who receive epidural anesthesia during labor have an elevated chance of having a child with autism, a new study has found. But it is too soon for doctors to recommend against epidurals, experts say.

By Peter Hess
13 October 2020 | 6 min read
human figure outline with various parts drawn in, showing pain

Autistic children disproportionately affected by chronic pain

Children with autism are about twice as likely as their typical peers to experience chronic or repeated pain.

By Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky
13 November 2019 | 3 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Photograph of the BRIDGE team and students visiting a laboratory.

Sharing Africa’s brain data: Q&A with Amadi Ihunwo

These data are “virtually mandatory” to advance neuroscience, says Ihunwo, a co-investigator of the Brain Research International Data Governance & Exchange (BRIDGE) initiative, which seeks to develop a global framework for sharing, using and protecting neuroscience data.

By Lauren Schenkman
20 May 2025 | 6 min read
Research image of neurite overgrowth in cells grown from people with autism-linked PPP2R5D variants.

Cortical structures in infants linked to future language skills; and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 19 May.

By Jill Adams
20 May 2025 | 2 min read
Digitally distorted building blocks.

The BabyLM Challenge: In search of more efficient learning algorithms, researchers look to infants

A competition that trains language models on relatively small datasets of words, closer in size to what a child hears up to age 13, seeks solutions to some of the major challenges of today’s large language models.

By Alona Fyshe
19 May 2025 | 7 min read