The Neurobiology of Pain & Opioids
The Scherrer Lab investigates the mechanisms that underlie pain perception and its modulation by opioids. We study the sensory, emotional and cognitive dimensions of pain, and how opioids act in neural circuits to produce pain relief and their deleterious side effects such as tolerance, addiction and respiratory depression. By uncovering the fundamental neurobiological processes by which our nervous system shapes pain experience and responds to opioids, our research enables the development of novel therapeutics to block pain more efficiently, and with reduced side effects, compared to current medications.
To resolve pain and opioid mechanisms comprehensively, at the genetic, molecular, cellular, neural circuit, and whole organism levels, our multidisciplinary research combines molecular and cellular biology, neuroanatomy, electrophysiology, opto-/chemo-genetics, in vivo recordings of neural activity and behavioral experiments. The neuroanatomical images above show that we study pain and opioid mechanisms across the entire nervous system, from primary afferent sensory neurons that detect noxious stimuli, to the neurons that integrate and transmit pain information in the spinal cord, as well as the brain neurons that generate and control pain emotions.