Jing Wang
New York University, NY·Neuroscience
Pain is not just a signal from the body. The brain builds it, combining the incoming signal with emotion, expectation and memory.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
pain
nociception
anterior cingulate cortex
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Test whether chronic pain causes lasting changes in the anterior cingulate cortex that drive pain anticipation and ongoing pain, using brain-computer interfaces to modulate ACC activity.
- Determine whether brain-computer-interface control of prefrontal cortex output can scale down pain information flow and pain behavior, and how chronic pain impairs this control.
- Test whether chronic postoperative pain strengthens S1-to-ACC and insula-to-ACC inputs while weakening hypothalamus-to-prelimbic input, using calcium imaging and optogenetics in freely moving rats.
- Determine whether restoring these circuits with closed-loop optogenetics, ketamine or oxytocin relieves chronic pain in a rat nerve-injury model of postoperative pain.
More about the research
No single brain area is a "pain center." Instead, several regions work together. The primary somatosensory cortex (S1) tracks where and when something hurts. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) makes pain feel unpleasant. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), including a subregion called the prelimbic cortex (PL), can turn pain up or down. Gaps in understanding how the brain handles pain have contributed to both undertreated pain and opioid overuse. Working in rats, the lab studies how these cortical circuits share information and how chronic pain rewires them. The goal is to find brain-circuit targets for treatments that do not rely on opioids.
Why it matters
Undertreated pain and opioid misuse after surgery are major public health problems. This work could identify specific brain circuits as targets for non-opioid pain treatments. It may also support the use of drugs like ketamine or oxytocin to repair pain-related circuit changes. Brain-activity markers of pain could improve how chronic pain is diagnosed and treated.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Puja Parekh
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Neuroscience·Early-career
Determine how two anterior cingulate cortex neuron groups, those projecting to the nucleus accumbens and those projecting to the insula, encode reward- and effort-predicting cues, using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging during an effort valuation task.
John H Freeman
University of Iowa, IA·Neuroscience
Record spikes and local field potentials with multiple tetrodes in the anterior cingulate cortex, dorsal hippocampus, and cerebellum of rats during trace conditioning, to test whether these regions interact in both directions throughout learning.
Scott Wilke
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Neuroscience
Record how anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) neurons and ACC-to-nucleus accumbens projection neurons represent effort-related costs and benefits during choices, using miniature head-mounted microscopes in freely behaving animals.
The school
New York University: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 540 research doctorates a year.
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