Our Mission

The Pain and Emotion Neuroscience Laboratory (PENLab) focuses on understanding how the human brain builds up the experience of bodily pain and different experiences associated with emotional suffering in health and disease across the lifespan.

Research Focus

We investigate brain-mind-body mechanisms underlying pain and affective symptoms across juvenile and adult populations. Our work emphasizes:

  • Brain mechanisms and psychosocial processes that underlie somatic complaints and affective suffering and recovery in chronic pain, depression, and anxiety.

  • Functional brain imaging analysis, combining subjective pain/emotion measures and psychophysiological data to understand the neural basis of pain and emotion.

  • Identification of brain-behavioral signatures in chronic pain, depression, and anxiety — exploring overlapping and distinct neural patterns across these disorders.

  • Effects of social support, mindfulness meditation, and altruistic behavior on regulating pain and affective experiences.

Approach

Our lab uses cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques, computational methods, and multivariate pattern analysis to decode how the brain processes pain and emotional information. We combine functional MRI, psychophysiology, and behavioral measures to build comprehensive models of pain and affective processing.

PENLab is based at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Barcelona.