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Taylor Lab Contributes to Nature Study on Brain Mechanisms that Prioritize Survival Over Pain

Three people in a side-by-side collage. On the left is Dr. Brad Taylor, a man with short gray-blond hair and a trimmed beard wearing a blue collared shirt and smiling at the camera. In the center is Dr. Tyler Nelson, a young man with pulled-back hair wearing a white lab coat and sitting in a laboratory setting. On the right is Dr. Heather Allen, a woman with teal hair, large round glasses, and dark lipstick wearing a striped shirt and gray cardigan, posing in an indoor setting.
Bradley K. Taylor, PhD; Tyler Nelson, PhD; and Heather Allen, PhD

A multi-institutional study, recently published in Nature, sheds light on how the brain prioritizes critical survival behaviors over pain. The study, “A Parabrachial Hub for Need-State Control of Enduring Pain,” was led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, with key contributions from Heather Allen, PhD, and Tyler Nelson, PhD, in the laboratory of Bradley K. Taylor, PhD, at the University of Pittsburgh. A senior co-author on this study, Dr. Taylor is Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

 

The study identifies a critical population of neurons in the brainstem’s parabrachial nucleus that express the Y1 receptor for neuropeptide Y, which Dr. Taylor has been studying for over 25 years. These neurons function as a regulatory hub, allowing organisms to ignore pain in favor of addressing urgent physiological needs such as severe hunger, thirst, or other life-threating situations. This neuronal mechanism of endogenous analgesia, natural, internally generated pain relief, enables adaptive behaviors like foraging or escaping danger despite the presence of injury or chronic pain conditions.

 

These findings offer important insights into how the nervous system balances competing biological priorities and could inform future pain management strategies by targeting circuits involved in natural pain relief. 

 

The publication has garnered additional attention through features in UPMC’s Inside Life Changing Medicine and Penn Today, as well as the following selected articles:

 

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