Pain Researchers

These researchers are actively engaged in areas of research related to Central Pain. This list of researchers is in a random order, so please do not infer anything from the organization of this page. The primary purpose of this list is to make it a little easier to locate current research literature on issues related to Central Pain.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive list and individuals are listed in random order. If you know of other researchers that you feel should be on this list, please email me with details. You may also refer to The Heroes of Pain Research for other names which are not listed here. 

William Willis, Jr. at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who found signals showing evidence of visceral and somatic pain in the cerebellum of rats. His contributions in the area of pain research and in educating others who are researching pain are invaluable. 

Clifford Woolf at Harvard University is threading out the biochemical changes in neuropathic pain. 

Zsuzsanna Wiesenfeld-Hallin is a neurophysiologist at Karolinska Insitutet (Sweden) who developed the animal model for Central Pain together with her colleagues. Dr. Wiesenfeld-Hallin appears a the photo with a group of pain researchers at the Huddinge University Hospital, a branch of the Karolinska Institutet. In the photo on the group's webpage she is seated in the center of the front row wearing a gray blazer. 

Tony Yaksh, a pharmacologist at University of California, San Diego, has done much work on the dorsal root gangion and has spawned a whole generation of pain researching pharmacologists.

Patrick Mantyh at the University of Minnesota discovered the gene expression of pain neurons is altered in CNS neurons with chronic pain. He pioneered the ideas of linking cell poisons with neurotransmitters to kill neurons or in gene therapy for pain. 

Annika Malmberg is a pharmacologist at University of California, San Francisco, and has studied genes in rats which make Central Pain possible. She formerly worked with Tony Yaksh. The link to her web page still works, but she is no longer at this lab and I have not been able to track her down to see if she has a newer page she would prefer to to post.

Ken Casey in Ann Arbor Michigan who first researched PET scans and pain.

Michael Iadarola at the National Institutes of Health studies perfusion changes in the brain in Central Pain.

Frederick Lenz at Johns Hopkins University found bursting in the thalamus of Central Pain patients.

Patrick Wall: Together with Ron Melzack the coauthor of the gate-control theory of pain. Before his death in 2001 he was also co-editor of "The Textbook of Pain" and professor emeritus from the the University College London. 

Ronald Melzack: As stated in the comments about Dr. Wall, Dr. Melzack has made a significant influence on the world of brain science with the gate-control theory of pain. He has countless published articles and continues to stay active in research.

Ron Tasker: A brilliant Canadian neurosurgeon working the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto, Ron Tasker, began to study pain in the 1970s. Tasker earned world-wide recognition for discovering the specific tract that carries pain in the spinal cord and lower portions of the brain, known as the spinothalamic tract. No personal webpage available.