Laura Case
University of California-San Diego, CA·Neuroscience
A gentle stroke on the arm or a firm squeeze can feel pleasant and can even reduce pain, which is part of why people turn to massage. Yet it is not known which nerve pathways carry these effects from the skin to the brain.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
affective touch
pain modulation
massage therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Determine how much A-fibers and C-fibers contribute to the pleasantness and pain reduction of deep pressure, testing whether A-fibers alone are necessary and sufficient for these effects.
- Test, using fMRI during A-fiber blockade, whether left anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex activation predicts how C-tactile fibers contribute to touch-induced pain modulation.
- Use machine learning to explore individual differences in C-tactile contributions to touch pleasantness and pain modulation, and their link to interoceptive sensibility and heart rate variability.
More about the research
Answering this matters because people with chronic pain need non-drug options. Knowing the pathways could point to new ways to relieve pain without invasive treatment.
Why it matters
Massage is widely used for relaxation and pain relief, but how it works is unclear. Mapping which nerve fibers and brain regions carry the pleasant and pain-reducing effects of stroking and deep pressure could guide non-invasive pain control. It could also identify targets for non-invasive neuromodulation, treatments that adjust nerve or brain activity, for people living with chronic pain.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sharona Ben-Haim
University of California-San Diego, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
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.
Anson Kairys
University of Michigan, MI·Neuroscience·Early-career
Compare subjective (self-reported) and objective (test-based) cognitive function between people with fibromyalgia and healthy controls, and assess how co-occurring symptoms shape the relationship between the two.
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.
The school
University of California-San Diego: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 637 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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