Professor Ben Seymour BSc MB ChB PhD MRCP FRSA, Podium Institute inaugural member and affiliated faculty, was featured in an article in the Observer on 22nd December 2024, entitled Ouch, Solving the Riddle of Pain.
Ben Seymour is a professor of clinical neuroscience and honorary consultant neurologist at Oxford University. His research interests lie in pain, injury and clinical neuroengineering. His extraordinary work developing the computational neuroscience of the pain system illuminates how pain can protect us from and through injury, and how sometimes pain can persist beyond it usefulness towards chronic pain.
In the article by Emma Cook, we can find out more about Prof Seymour’s fascinating research in his lab at the heart of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering where, in a novel virtual reality set up participants can move safely and experience different types of pain in a more natural environment. This valuable data can then be translated into an effective therapy by seeing how an individual’s brain perceives physiological pain, and how this guides the person’s behaviour. By mapping this pain perception in chronic pain patients, researchers can pinpoint the location of abnormalities, identify where the pain response is hardwired, and then develop interventions.
Giving his own description of what pain is Professor Seymour said: “It’s part sense, part emotion, part feeling, part qualia. It’s also fundamental to the notion of who we are. Nothing else ties you to your own body, to the present moment. I’d argue that pain is the requirement that precipitated the evolution of movement. Even an amoeba knows the most important thing is not to get squashed.”
Pain remains one of science’s greatest enigmas, probably because it’s so challenging to communicate one’s personal experience of it and for others to truly grasp what that experience is like.
At the Podium Institute Inaugural Annual Conference in September 2024, Prof Seymour gave an extraordinary Keynote talk on understanding injury, discussing how many cognitive and mental health manifestations of injury, often dismissed as reactive responses, actually reflect global systems control modulation as part of a larger sophisticated injury system.
Radio 4’s Today Programme with Vice Chancellor Irene Tracey CBE, FMedSci
Later in the same week, Prof Ben Seymour’s work was discussed by the University of Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey on Radio 4’s Today Programme on 28th December. The Vice Chancellor’s guest edit featured the theme of Hope and Kindness, drawing on her expertise in neuroscience, particularly concentrating on the nature of pain. Prof Tracey has devoted 30 years to understanding pain, researching its vital usefulness in alerting us to danger to avoid harm in what is referred to as ‘good pain’. Chronic pain on the other hand is defined as long standing pain that persists beyond the usual recovery period or occurs along with a chronic health condition, such as arthritis.
Professor Tracey explained how a multidisciplinary approach is needed in order to tackle the different aspects of chronic pain. Prof. Seymour’s research is well aligned with this goal and occurs at the systems-and human perception end of pain treatment. By trying to understand how brain mechanisms produce pain, and using brain manipulation devices, the experience of pain can be switched off.
The programme also featured Sir Mo Farah, who provided insights into the nature of athlete’s pain, drawing from his personal experience of “pushing through the pain.”
When asked how he overcomes the urge to stop when in extreme pain, he emphasised the importance of “digging deep,” explaining that with more experience and training, we learn the true limits of our body’s tolerance. He stressed the mind’s crucial role in training the body, asserting that we are capable of far more than we often believe. He also briefly mentioned his work with the Youth Sports Trust campaign, “Let’s Get Moving Together,” which aims to encourage more children in the UK to be physically active. A cause very close to the Podium Institute’s own heart.
The programme is a must listen for anyone interested in neuroscience, pain and sports! You can listen to the Today Programme here: Today – 28/12/2024 – BBC Sounds [Fast forward to 1:10:04 to listen to Ben Seymour’s interview]