Pew Charitable Trust Award

The Abdus-Saboor lab will explore how the brain processes the physical sensation and emotional experience of pain. Pain is often accompanied by negative feelings that can go beyond momentary discomfort to provoke anger and even despair. Yet how the brain assesses the emotional unpleasantness of pain—and why the experience can vary wildly from one individual to another—is a mystery. Using advanced imaging and computational methods, my lab has developed an innovative technique for evaluating the physical and emotional response to pain in mice. Combining this technique with advanced methods for monitoring and manipulating the activity of individual neurons, my lab will map and characterize the neural networks that link the brain regions responsible for sensation and emotion. In addition, we will study a wide range of genetically divergent inbred strains of mice to identify the genes and molecules associated with heightened or diminished pain sensitivity—work that could lead to novel therapies for reducing pain perception or the emotional unpleasantness that accompanies physical discomfort.