Pint of Science is a festival where researchers share their scientific discoveries at a local pub. Creative Reactions is the artistic branch of Pint of Science where the researchers are paired with an artist to make a piece about their scientific discovery. 

In 2019, I participated in the Creative Reactions event and was paired with Dr. Mike Nahorski in the rare disease category. 

“We know that risk of pain is heritable, but little is known about the exact genetic causes which underlie susceptibility to pain or pain threshold. This is where the rare disease aspect comes in - there is a very rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain where a person is born with no pain sensing whatsoever.”

When Dr. Mike Nahorski gave me this introduction to his research, I began to think about how to represent it visually. The amount of pain we feel actually depends on signal sensitivity from body part to neuron. I imagined a card game where we all get a Wild Card in the womb - we don’t know what kind of sensitivity to pain we’re going to get: neurons that are more sensitive to pain stimulation or those that are not.

Continuing with the card game theme, I imagined that the people who have congenital insensitivity to pain have an ace up one’s sleeve that they play when they get hurt and would otherwise feel pain. Dr. Mike Nahorski’s research is aiming to make that card available to everyone when dealing with chronic pain.