Professor Irene Tracey’s Profile in The New Yorker

Pembroke Fellow and Head of Department & Nuffield Chair in Anaesthetic Science, Professor Irene Tracey, featured in a recent article by Nicola Twilley titled ‘The Neuroscience of Pain’ in The New Yorker magazine.

The FMRIB Pain Analgesia-Anaesthesia Imaging Neuroscience (P.A.I.N) Group, which Professor Tracey leads, aims to understand pain perception, analgesia and altered states of consciousness through advanced neuroimaging.

In this extended and engaging New Yorker article, Twilley recounts her experience of visiting Prof. Tracey at the John Radcliffe Hospital to participate in some experiments in pain perception. Interwoven through the story are details about Professor Tracey’s background, her research development and career path.

It was towards the end of a fellowship in Boston in 1991 that Professor Tracey began focusing seriously on pain. She tells of a chance encounter with colleagues in a pain clinic discussing the nature of pain and the limited neurological understanding of how pain works. She recognised that ‘It’s got clinical application, interesting philosophy, and we know absolutely nothing...’.

As Professor Tracey explained, ‘we still don’t know exactly how the brain constructs this experience, that you absolutely, unarguably know hurts’. Other sense perceptions, touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing, can be assigned to particular parts of the brain but we aren’t able to do that for pain.

The article traces the development of Professor Tracey’s research, from early uses of functional magnetic-resonance-imaging (fMRI) scanners to understand areas of the brain that were activated during the anticipation of pain to experiments showing the potential neurological imprint that cultural attitudes around pain could have. This research allowed her to start to explain why people experience the same pain differently and how someone can feel the same pain differently from one day to the next.

The article also touches on the legal ramifications of pain neuroimaging and expands on Professor Tracey’s recent studies and experiments around chronic pain. Twilley’s piece is a fascinating insight into Professor Tracey’s research, past and present. Read or listen to the article in full, here.