{
  "id": 6437282,
  "title": "The secret your brain uses to decide how much pain you feel",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/09/the-secret-your-brain-uses-to-decide-how-much-pain-you-feel",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-09T16:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Big Think",
    "slug": "big-think",
    "url": "https://bigthink.com/series/curiosity-lab/curiosity-lab-1/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "We treat pain like a plumbing problem. Something in the body is broken, so we block the signal with medication or cut it out with surgery. The opioid epidemic is what happens when that is the only model we have. Pain psychologist Rachel Zoffness explains why it is also an incomplete account of how pain works. Pain is constructed by the brain, out of biology, emotion, and environment at once. Most…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}