Oxford Pain: Latest News
- February 2026 - Free Public Talk - Can electrodes in the brain treat chronic pain? Upcoming Events – NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre. Watch this fascinating video from our public talk by leading Professors in Neurology at Oxford University including images of the latest brain surgery for Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and the patient's lived experience. Professor Ben Seymour, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford and Professor Alex Green, Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences - University of Oxford showed us how our brain processes pain, what neurological conditions can arise as a result and how 'like the intelligent octopus' we can re-learn our pain responses by exploring pathways to change behaviours. We also saw exciting surgery from their new EPIONE clinical trial where the first patients underwent surgery recently to facilitate DBS and heard patient Nigel's personal experience. Watch the full talk here: https://lnkd.in/eSMFc7c5
- January 2026 - Publication Highlight - Why do we probe an injury? New research links information seeking to chronic pain mechanisms. Why do we probe an injury even when it hurts? In a new study published in PLOS Computational Biology, Pranav Mahajan, Peter Dayan, and Ben Seymour provide a computational answer: to reduce uncertainty about one’s injury. Using a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework, the authors show that pain-related behaviour is a trade-off between protecting the body and gathering information about its state. While probing helps the brain infer healing, the study highlights a critical "fault line" where this process fails: information restriction. Crucially, this work complements the Fear-Avoidance model by providing a formal, quantitative account of how avoidance leads to chronic pain. The authors demonstrate that when fear drives excessive avoidance, the brain is deprived of the sensory evidence needed to update its beliefs. This creates a closed loop where the belief in injury persists despite physical tissue healing.
Link to paper: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013538 - January 2026 - Researchers at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London have developed a proof-of-concept treatment that uses focused ultrasound to trigger the formation of a spinal disc implant from an injected material, with precise control over when and where it forms. The work, published in Advanced Healthcare Materials, brings together expertise from Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, and Imperial’s Sir Michael Uren Hub. Led by Dr Veerle Brans and Dr Anna Constantinou, with collaborators including Dr Nic Newell, Dr Matthew Kibble, Dr Michael Gray and Professor Dame Molly Stevens, the team showed early success restoring cushioning in damaged discs - monitored in real time using sound. A promising step towards minimally invasive treatments for one of the world’s leading causes of disability. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSxaFKPDOAP/
- December 2025 - Publication Highlight - Beyond Nociception: Modelling the "artificial sense of injury" via predictive coding. How does an organism know it needs to protect itself? A new study by Mahajan et al. argues that self-preservation relies on a robust internal model of the body’s sensorimotor repertoire. Published in Neural Computation, using a robotic arm as a testbed, the study uses temporal predictive coding to show how fault detection and correction emerge naturally when the body deviates from its learned sensorimotor repertoire. The authors demonstrate that the resulting predictive surprise serves as a critical homeostatic signal—suggesting that the fundamental "sense" of injury may be rooted in deviations from predicted homeostatic grace. Link to paper: https://doi.org/10.1162/NECO.a.1475
- November 2025 - Oxford researchers to redefine new human-based research models of pain — Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
- October 2025 - New Oxford-led project aims to revolutionise chronic pain treatment | University of Oxford
- October 2025 - Publication Highlight - The Safety-Efficiency Dilemma: Why flexible fear is key to survival (and maybe pain recovery). How do we explore the world for rewards efficiently while minimising harm? In a study published in eLife and featured in the eLife digest, Pranav Mahajan and colleagues explore this fundamental "safety-efficiency dilemma." Using computational modelling and virtual-reality experiments with healthy volunteers, the authors demonstrate that the brain employs a sophisticated, uncertainty-guided mechanism to modulate the influence of the Pavlovian fear system. When the environment is uncertain, fear takes the wheel to ensure safety; when it is predictable, fear recedes to allow efficient reward-seeking. The digest highlights a crucial clinical implication: anxiety and chronic pain may not stem from a fixed overactive fear system, but from an inflexible one, where the brain fails to dial down fear even when the world becomes safe and predictable.
Link to paper: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.101371.3
Link to eLife digest: https://elifesciences.org/digests/101371/inflexible-anxieties - August 2025 - Chronic pain research breakthrough identifies promising drug target — Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
- October 2024 - NDCN pain research highlighted in 'The Future with Hannah Fry'
- September 2023 - PAINCAST: A new collaborative podcast exploring the experience of neuropathic pain — Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences