Find in News Talk Sites Images For advanced search options, click here . Subscribe for free email updates . Click here to sign up, or log in . With 62 studies behind him, Jeffrey Mogil of the University of Illinois is narrowing the search for specific genes responsible for a person's response to pain. Mice more sensitive to pain will be less responsive to analgesics, such as morphine, and vice versa.
Involved genes are different in males and females.
Sex differences have been known about but considered only in quantitative ways. Both feel pain, but they are responding differently, by activating different circuitry in the brain. This implies that there are responders and non-responders. Mogil has found that 50 percent of animals tested both feel and respond to pain, while 50 percent don't feel it or better tolerate it. If the genome is the United States, I know that for a particular gene trait there is a gene living in Iowa that is responsible.