New research from the University of Colorado Boulder has uncovered a key brain circuit that decides whether short-term pain becomes long-lasting chronic pain. If this brain circuit is shut down, chronic pain doesn’t happen. And if someone already has chronic pain, switching off this circuit makes the pain stop. And in rats that already had chronic pain, turning off this circuit made their pain disappear. This research builds on previous findings from 2011, where Watkins’ lab suggested the CGIC was linked to chronic pain.