How Chronic Pain Saps Your Mental Motivation

A sore back or sprained wrist makes your day-to-day life harder in more ways than one. Physical impairment is annoying enough on its own, but the chronic pain is its own distraction - one that makes it hard to focus. It's been known for a while that chronic pain saps people's motivation. And now, a team led by Stanford University's Neil Schwartz has pinned down, in mice, some of the chemical and neural changes by which aches lead to ennui. Tricky Treats Schwartz and his team began b