Sharona Ben-Haim
University of California-San Diego, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Many Americans will live with chronic pain, and for some, current medicines and surgeries do not help. Stimulating brain circuits could relieve pain.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
chronic pain
nociception
intracranial EEG
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2027
What they work on
- Test whether self-reported post-surgical pain is linked to reduced beta-band activity in the prefrontal cortex, and whether opioid pain relief reverses it, using intracranial EEG in epilepsy-monitoring patients.
- Compare baseline high-beta/low-gamma brain activity in patients with and without pre-existing chronic pain to identify a candidate pain biomarker.
- Stimulate candidate brain regions through hybrid clinical-research electrodes to test whether the electrical and felt pain-relieved state can be recreated.
More about the research
Yet scientists still do not understand well how signals from injured tissue become the feeling of pain in the human brain, and that knowledge is needed to choose where and how to stimulate. This project studies brain activity directly in people to find electrical signatures of pain.
Why it matters
People with chronic pain who have not been helped by medicines or surgery need new options, a need made sharper by the opioid epidemic. Identifying brain signals that track pain, and regions where stimulation reduces it, could guide better targeting for treatments such as deep brain stimulation for chronic intractable pain.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Laura Case
University of California-San Diego, CA·Neuroscience
Determine how much A-fibers and C-fibers contribute to the pleasantness and pain reduction of slow, gentle stroking by selectively blocking each fiber type in healthy adult volunteers.
Jing Wang
New York University, NY·Neuroscience
Map how pain signals change the flow of information among the somatosensory, anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex in rats, and test whether real-time, light-based disruption of S1 changes pain behavior.
Matthew Banks
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Neuroscience
Identify intracranial EEG biomarkers that distinguish conscious and unconscious states while epilepsy patients go under and emerge from general anesthesia.
The school
University of California-San Diego: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 637 research doctorates a year.
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