Frank Porreca and Tamara King are co-investigators on a PNAS paper on pain relief
Tamara King, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine, is a co-investigator of a study that appeared in the Nov. 26, 2012 Early Edition issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study titled "Pain relief produces negative reinforcement through activation of mesolimbic reward–valuation circuitry" explores new preclinical measures that may better reflect features of the human experience of pain and that can be used to find new therapies.
Relief of pain is rewarding, according to lead investigator Frank Porreca, Ph.D., of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, who is a part-time faculty member in the UNE College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Center for Excellence in the Neurosciences. The study demonstrated that treatments that relieve the unpleasant feeling of pain also activate reward circuits and reinforce behaviors that result in relief of pain. Read the PNAS paper online.