Four tiny 3D organs connected themselves in a lab dish, forming a replica of the human pain pathway, in a new study. The discovery allows scientists to better understand chronic pain and how pain ...

Digital distraction affects how we respond to suffering. This story shows how our attention shapes empathy, safety, and the ...

Electronic skins that perform the same sensory functions as human skin could mean big things for the fields of robotics and medical devices, and scientists are not solely focused on just the pleasant ...

Two new brain-imaging studies describing the origins of empathy and how placebos work provide insights into the nature of pain, the mind-body connection and what it means to be human. Whether we’re ...

If you think all snails are cute, harmless creatures, you haven’t met the cone snail. The sea dweller lives underwater and preys on fish, worms, and other gastropod mollusks. Snails don’t have claws, ...

Lauren Koenig receives funding from the National Science Foundation. It’s hard to appreciate the value of pain when we feel it, but most living things would not survive without it. Pain is a signal ...

In 1934, a year after Hitler’s ascent to power, Ernst Jünger, a World War I storm trooper, published an essay rejecting liberal, bourgeois society’s embrace of security, ease, pleasure and comfort. He ...

Organoids are bits of neural tissue that model human brain development. Their use in science makes some uneasy, in part because the brain is so closely tied to our sense of self.

Scientists have identified the neural mechanisms through which sound blunts pain in mice. The findings could inform development of safer methods to treat pain. An international team of scientists has ...