| Citation | Allan Basbaum has made pioneering observations in pain research. He discovered an endogenous pain control network that underlies the analgesia produced both by opiates and electrical brain stimulation, and showed that this analgesia results from inhibition of spinal cord pain transmission neurons. His studies of the deafferented spinal cord established the first animal model of neuropathic pain and demonstrated a remarkable plasticity of somatotopic maps, an observation that inspired numerous studies of injury and use-dependent reorganization in the somatosensory system. He also demonstrated a critical contribution of the nervous system to inflammatory disease and, using genetic approaches to analyze molecules that underlie the development of chronic pain, has identified several new therapeutic targets for its treatment. |