Your Brain Invents Pain. Here's Why.
The Rest Is Science
Jul 5, 2026 21:00
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Stubbing your toe feels like the pain is entirely in your foot. But the reality is far stranger... the agonising sensation you experience is actually a highly complex, constructed illusion, invented in real-time by your brain.
In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (VSauce) explore the weird neuroscience of human pain and why pain is ultimately a brilliant evolutionary survival mechanism, how psychological state and the placebo effect can physically alter how much an injury hurts.
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