(Inside Science) — This year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine went to two scientists who discovered how our sense of temperature and touch works. David Julius identified the heat-sensing ion channel TRPV1, while Ardem Patapoutian found the touch-sensitive Piezo channels.
Both channels form pores in cell membranes, which allows the cells to send electrochemical signals through the body. That process is involved in how our bodies sense pain -- from heat and from mechanical force, respectively. But pain is a much more complicated phenomenon than can be captured by simple biochemical pathways. The molecular channels identified by the Nobel winners are just the beginning of that story, and there is much more left to be discovered, especially about how the pain signals provided by those channels are transmitted to and interpreted by the brain.
"Pain is a very complex effect," said Serge Marchand, a pain researcher at the University ...
