Researchers Unplugged: Meet the Researcher Working to Understand Why Chronic Pain Persists
Mass General Brigham is home to a research community of thousands of individuals working to understand disease and develop solutions to medicine’s most pressing challenges.
But who are they? And what do they do when they’re not conducting research? Learn more about them in the Researchers Unplugged series!
From clinical research coordinators to postdoctoral fellows, research technicians, graduate students and principal investigators—they are all part of research at Mass General Brigham.
Our next guest in the series is Ekim Luo, PhD.
1. What lab do you work in and what is your role?
I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of Marco Loggia, PhD, at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging within the Department of Radiology at Mass General Brigham.
The Loggia Lab focuses on understanding how chronic pain affects the brain.
Using advanced imaging tools such as MRI and PET scans, the team studies the changes that happen in the brain when pain becomes long-lasting, and whether some of these changes may even appear before chronic pain develops.
2. Can you explain your research in layperson's terms?
We look at a type of inflammatory marker in the brain and body of people living with chronic pain.
Pain is not always a bad thing. You want your body to react and send pain signals when something harmful is happening. That's what makes chronic pain so interesting. If pain helps keep us safe and away from danger, why does it sometimes continue long after it's needed, with no obvious reason?
This is what we are trying to figure out at the Loggia Lab. It turns out that the brain plays a major role in how much pain you feel, when you feel it, and how long it lasts. We want to understand why the brain continues sending pain signals even when they are no longer helpful, like a morning alarm that keeps ringing even though you're already awake and out of bed.
To do this, we look at both the internal and external factors that shape a person's experience, including mental health, social environment, pain symptoms and treatments received. We then explore whether changes in these inflammatory markers can be linked to any of these factors.
3. When and why did you get interested in this work?
I was interested in the biology of pain at the start of my PhD studies, specifically how we perceive and empathize with other people's pain.
I wanted to understand why we connect with someone else's pain in some situations but not in others, and how our own experiences and state of mind influence that connection. This all started when I learned that mice can experience this type of empathy for pain, showing that pain has a contagious quality that is not unique to humans.
It seemed like such a fundamental, universal experience across species, yet there were still so many unanswered questions. For example, people living with fibromyalgia often do not have a clear-cut explanation for their pain symptoms.
Yet, in science, we tend to think of everything as a determined outcome, where every effect has a clear cause.
When you start studying this type of "unexplained" or "mysterious" pain, you begin looking in places you might not have considered before, such as emotions. You start thinking about pain from a different perspective and asking questions like: Is pain really just an emotion? And if not, what makes it different?
By the end of my PhD studies, I knew I wanted to continue studying pain. Now, two years into my postdoctoral training, I am just as fascinated by it and have no desire to stop.
4. What do you do outside of the lab?
The boring but true answer is that I just read novels and fawn over my cat, but I also spend a lot of time hanging out with friends.
Editor's note: We reached out to ask for photos of the cat, and this was the response we received: “I’m afraid I foster-failed a pair of twins from the shelter since I filled out this form, so I now have three cats.”
5. What is your favorite TV show, podcast, book or movie?
I have many favorite books, but the one I like to go back to is Dance! Dance! Dance! by Haruki Murakami.
I especially like the start of the book when the protagonist talks about this recurring dream in a strange hotel, and you get the feeling of walking inside the damp, old-fashioned hallway, with the walls closing in on you, but you can't or don't want to get out. It evokes a feeling of sweet nostalgia in me even though I have never personally experienced anything like it, which I enjoy.
6. What's a fun fact about yourself?
My lab is so quirky that I genuinely don't think there is anything about me that would surprise them.
Although I don't think my boss (Marco Loggia, PhD) knows that I worked for a theater company as a freelance writer for a few months while I was doing my PhD studies.
7. What do you like most about conducting research at Mass General Brigham?
The energy of a Christmas party after someone starts jamming on the piano, and then everyone starts singing along terribly. Plus-one guests can sometimes be shocked when they see my lab mates and me together.
That sense of camaraderie is something I really value. I also genuinely love the kind of data we work with and the research questions I get to explore.
8. If you could only eat one dish for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Rice with a spoon of butter, a spoon of soy sauce and some spring onions. I would be malnourished but maybe it is worth it.
9. What’s your favorite way of spending a Sunday morning?
Play Age of Empires II for the entire weekend, but my husband says I should stop doing that now that I am no longer a PhD student.
10. What's something on your bucket list?
Learn to surf very well. Preferably with no injuries but knowing me this is unlikely.
It's Your Turn to Shine!
Do you work in research at Mass General Brigham? Are you willing to provide short written answers to 10-ish fun questions about you and your science? Then you (yes, you) could be the next star of Researchers Unplugged.