Fear and Pain

Fear memory engram is the mind-killer

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 06 April 2023; doi:10.1038/s41593-023-01292-w Stegemann et al. have unraveled a long-lasting role for fear engrams in future pain perception. Prefrontal pain and fear representations become entangled following a fearful event. As subsequent painful experiences also reactivate the fear network, silencing the fear engram alone can alleviate both tonic pain and hypersensitivity […]

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Prefrontal engrams of long-term fear memory perpetuate pain perception

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 06 April 2023; doi:10.1038/s41593-023-01291-x Can erasing bad memories relieve pain? Stegemann et al. uncover the cellular basis of fear–pain interactions, reporting that fear potentiates pain via memories encoded in prefrontal engrams. Blocking these memory traces reduces chronic pain in mice.

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