Brain Circuitry Identified as Key to Chronic Pain, Offering New Hope for Treatment
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A newly discovered neural pathway in an understudied region of the brain appears to be central to the development of chronic pain, offering a potential target for innovative therapies, according to research published december 11, 2025, in the Journal of Neuroscience. The study, conducted by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder, demonstrates that silencing this pathway – known as the caudal granular insular cortex (CGIC) – can prevent or even reverse long-lasting pain conditions.
Approximately one in four adults suffer from chronic pain, and nearly one in ten report that it substantially interferes with their daily lives, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control.This research offers a crucial step toward understanding why acute pain sometimes transitions into a debilitating, persistent condition.
The “Gold Rush” of neuroscience
Acute pain, like the sharp sensation from a stubbed toe, serves as a vital warning signal. This initial pain response involves signals traveling from the injured tissue to the spinal cord and then to the brainS pain center. However, chronic pain differs significantly. It’s characterized as a “false alarm,” where pain signals continue to fire in the brain long after the initial injury has healed.
For years, scientists have sought to understand why this transition occurs. The new study suggests the CGIC plays a critical role in this process. previous research,dating back to 2011,indicated the CGIC’s involvement in allodynia,a condition where even light touch can trigger intense pain. Human studies have also shown increased activity in the CGIC of chronic pain patients.
Silencing the Pathway: A Potential Breakthrough
The University of Colorado Boulder team discovered that the CGIC is largely uninvolved in processing acute pain. However, it is vital in making pain persist. The CGIC signals the somatosensory cortex, the brain’s pain processing center, which then instructs the spinal cord to maintain the pain response.
“We found that activating this pathway excites the part of the spinal cord that relays touch and pain to the brain, causing touch to now be perceived as pain as well,” explained a researcher involved in the study. Remarkably, when the team deactivated cells within this pathway, either immediatly after injury or in animals already experiencing chronic pain, the pain subsided.
The Future of Pain Management
While the exact trigger for the CGIC to initiate chronic pain signals remains unknown, the findings open exciting possibilities for new treatments. Researchers envision a future where pain is managed through targeted injections or infusions that modulate activity in specific brain cells, avoiding the systemic side effects and potential for dependency associated with opioids.
Brain-machine interfaces, either implanted or attached to the skull, are also being explored as a potential solution for severe chronic pain.Several startups are actively developing these technologies, hoping to bring them to market. “Now that we have access to tools that allow you to manipulate the brain, not based just on a general region but on specific sub-populations of cells, the quest for new treatments is moving much faster,” one researcher noted.
Further research is necessary to translate these findings into effective therapies for humans, but this study represents a significant leap forward in our understanding of chronic pain and offers a beacon of hope for millions who suffer from this debilitating condition.
Source: University of Colorado at Boulder
Journal reference: Ball, J. B., et al. (2025). Caudal Granular Insular Cortex to Somatosensory Cortex I: A critical pathway for the transition of acute to chronic pain. The Journal of Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1306-25.2025. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2025/12/11/JNEUROSCI.1306-25.2025
