Understanding Pain

Fernando Cervero

An expert explores the nature of pain: why it hurts and why some pain is good and some pain is bad.

Fernando Cervero's unique ability to provide an understanding of the complex experience of pain will be appreciated by everyone. He integrates historical perspectives with useful anecdotes that contribute to understanding pain relative to personal experience. Noteworthy is his immensely readable chapter on pain hypersensitivity, which explains complex molecular and cellular changes leading to abnormal painful experiences that result in maladaptable behavior. Cervero correctly emphasizes that pain after injury is 'unnecessary and avoidable' and not merely a symptom, but a disease in itself, and must be treated. -- Ronald Dubner, Department of Neural and Pain Sciences, University of Maryland School of Dentistry Fernando Cervero has written an up-to-date introduction to the science of pain. His language is concise and his coverage of topics is broad and placed in historical perspective. Non-specialists will find in this book a readable, accessible and informative entry to the major questions and key discoveries that have broadened our understanding of pain. -- Howard Fields, Professor of Neurology; Director, Wheeler Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction, University of California, San Francisco In a straightforward but nevertheless fascinating way, Fernando Cervero, an excellent pain researcher and a superb writer, unravels the many well known facts as well as the just as numerous mysteries of pain. In comparison to our classical five senses, pain is a very different one indeed. Although it shares quite a number of features with those of the other sensory modalities, it has even more features which have no counterpart. -- Robert F. Schmidt, University of Wurzburg