Dr Sam Hughes

My research group uses a combination of psychophysics, neurophysiology, neuroimaging and psychometric assessments alongside immersive virtual reality, psychopharmacology and non-invasive brain stimulation to answer key translational neuroscience questions related to how pain is processed in the central nervous system. I am particularly interested in using this multimodal approach to translate mechanistic insights from experimental human pain models to clinical cohorts with a view to help create digital health innovations for chronic pain.

I am a founding member of the UK Chronic Pain Neurotechnology Network (CPNN+), a UKRI-funded academic-clinical-patient initiative launched in 2022, focused on accelerating the development of next-generation neurotechnologies for chronic pain (www.cpnn.ac.uk).

In 2022 I established the Exeter Pain Group, which comprises experts from various fields, including neuroscience, psychology, data science and clinical medicine with a view to understand phenotypic characteristics of pain conditions and to help inform more effective pain management.

I am the co-lead of the Exeter Brain Network and co-lead of the neuroscience research theme in the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences and sit on the Editorial Board of the Pain Research Forum.