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ANA Member and Summer Intern Meet Maika Pedersen BSc Neuroscience & Psychology at King's College London During her summer internship with ANA, Maika celebrated an incredible achievement: graduating with First Class Honours in Neuroscience & Psychology from King’s College London. As the celebratory picture shows, this milestone marked the culmination of three years of rigorous study at the prestigious Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), a world-renowned centre for neuroscience excellence. Maika’s journey was defined not only by academic success but also by her dedication to applying her knowledge in real-world contexts. She actively volunteered across various sectors, including as part of the King's Neuroscience Society, where she first connected with ANA during a Panel Discussion event. In her final year, Maika delved into the fascinating intersection of AI and neuroscience, focusing her dissertation on how individuals with anxiety perceive AI chatbot interventions as tools to achieve mental health goals. This work reflects her passion for blending cutting-edge technology with neuroscience to address complex challenges. Looking ahead, Maika aspires to make a meaningful impact in the evolving field of healthcare technologies. With her innovative mindset, creative approach, and unwavering drive, she is inspired by the potential of technical solutions to transform lives and tackle pressing global issues. Maika's Social Impact Pledge: 9. ETHICAL USE OF NEUROTECHNOLOGIES Join My TCK Conversation! While at ANA during my summer internship, I had the opportunity to co-host three episodes for the first of the new Podcast Series on ‘Third Culture Kids’ (TCKs), hosted by ANA with Interviewer, Psychologist and ANA Member, Nicola Jane Gregory. The episodes tackled aspects of the TCK experience, including identity, belonging, and the concept of home. Recording these podcast episodes was a unique and personal experience for me, as it provided an opportunity to reflect on my journey as a TCK, speaking about the complexities of growing up between cultures. Click the YouTube link below to tune in. Contact & Resources Get in touch with Maika and find out more about her work

ANA's formal partnerships, affiliations, and alumni connections are foundational to the ANA Network. ANA Collaborations ANA’s formal partnerships, affiliations, and alumni connections are foundational to fostering collaboration, sharing of expertise and resources, driving a shared mission for social impact, and collective efforts, including events and member initiatives. These relationships span diverse sectors, including neurodiversity in the workplace, educational neuroscience, healthcare technology, the intersection of AI and research, and entrepreneurship. Together, ANA, our members and collaborators extend the reach of our respective missions, co-creating innovative programmes, impactful tools, and meaningful outcomes. Our shared goal is empowering the ethical application of neuroscience for global impact. TCL Founder CEO Dr Anja Harrison ANA is a Participatory Organisation Applied Brain Lab Founder Gwen Bach Partnership King's Entrepreneurship Institute Alumni King's Accelerator King's IoPPN Alumni King's WEN Alumni & Event Collaboration NEURO Charity Founder Robert Annis Partnership M ind Circles Talks Founder Jenny Okolo Partnership

The Applied Neuroscience Association in the Brain Economy Feature Article ANA in the Brain Economy Feature Article - Appendices Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Part 1 Appendix 3 Part 2 Appendix 3 Part 3 Appendix 3 Part 4 Appendix 4 WAND2025 Talk 6

Feature Article

Delve into the science of Psychedelics and your brain with insights from various UK based research centres and experts in this field.

Author: Aneta Herrenschmidt-Moller Pain is weird! We all know what it is—but when we actually try to define it, it is notoriously difficult to communicate. Is it a sensation? An emotion? A survival mechanism? A social signal? The answer, as it turns out, is “yes” to all of the above, but with enough exceptions and caveats to make even the most confident neuroscientist second-guess themselves. At its simplest, pain is a biological function—your nervous system’s way of saying, “Hey, stop doing that !” This is the stuff we understand pretty well: nociceptors – the special nerve endings located in your skin and deep tissues detect tissue damage, send a distress signal up the spinal cord, and your brain interprets that as Ouch  ! But then things get complicated, when we have two people with the exact same injury, yet report wildly different levels of pain. One soldier takes a bullet and keeps fighting ; another person twists their ankle and swears they’ll never walk again. So, what’s going on here? The answer is that pain isn’t just about nerve endings—it’s about how we interpret the signals they send. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum; rather, it’s shaped by context, emotion, culture, and expectation. In this way, pain is not merely a physical sensation, but also a psychological, social, and cultural experience. In other words, pain is not one single thing—it is many things at once. And that complexity is precisely why pain is still one of science’s most elusive and enduring mysteries. The Two Camps : Biology vs. Experience For decades, the debate about pain has been stuck in a tug-of-war between two camps: One prominent theoretical orientation in the neuroscientific study of pain adopts a neurobiological reductionist framework who argue that pain is just an electrochemical process in the nervous system. If we map out every neuron, neurotransmitter, and receptor involved, the thinking goes, we’ll fully understand pain. On the other side, often found in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy, emphasises the contextual and experiential dimensions of pain, proposing that pain is shaped by expectation, meaning, and social environment. In their view, pain isn’t something you have; it’s something you experience, and that experience is moulded by our believes, culture, language, and past trauma. So who’s right? Well, frustratingly (or excitingly, depending on how you look at it), both and neither! Pain is biology plus interpretation, and trying to separate the two is like trying to isolate the “wetness” from water. Pain as a Contextual Interpretation and Prediction Here’s where things get really interesting. Pain is an interpretation, and sometimes, the brain gets it wrong. Consider phantom limb pain. An amputee can feel excruciating pain in a limb that no longer exists. There are no nerves endings, no physical injury, and yet the pain is real, because the brain insists that the limb should be there, and it’s detecting “pain” where there is nothing to detect. This is one of the clearest proof we have that pain isn’t simply a sensory event—it’s a prediction made by the brain. This predictive nature of pain means that context matters enormously. If you believe something is going to hurt, it’s more likely to hurt. If you’re told a treatment will work, it’s more likely to relieve pain, even if it’s just a placebo. If you’re stressed, depressed, or fearful, pain is amplified. If you’re distracted or feeling safe, pain diminishes. While these effects aren’t universal or deterministic, they are intended to highlight the complex interplay between brain, body, and context in how pain is experienced. And this isn’t just psychological fluff—it’s based on hard neuroscience research. The brain’s limbic system, anterior cingulate cortex, and prefrontal cortex are all actively involved in shaping pain perception. The same brain regions that process emotions, expectations, and social cues also shape how much something hurts. About Pain? So, where does this leave us? Pain, it turns out, isn’t the raw, unfiltered broadcast of tissue damage that many of us grew up believing it to be. It’s not some objective ‘ticker tape of hurt’ scrolling in from the body to be faithfully read by the brain. Instead, pain is a story the brain tells itself—a deeply contextual, highly predictive narrative stitched together from experience, emotion, memory, and expectation. This means that pain is less about what is happening and more about what the brain thinks might happen. It’s a hypothesis, not a photograph. And like any good hypothesis, it’s shaped by prior beliefs, available data (e.g. memories, familial patterns and cultural cues) and—critically—the surrounding context. Sometimes the prediction serves us well, like pulling away from a hot stove. Other times, it becomes maladaptive, like when the pain sticks around long after the tissue has healed, kept alive by a nervous system that’s still possibly ‘bracing for impact’. Pain Reframe This reframe doesn’t mean pain is “all in your head” in an eye-rolling, dismissive way. Rather, pain is in your head because that's where your brain constructs it - for it's main evolutionary job: to protect you. Understanding that doesn’t make pain less real. In fact, it makes it more real—because it means pain isn’t just about tissue damage, it’s about meaning, context, memory, and emotion. And, yes, that makes it messier, more human, and infinitely harder to pin down. Which is exactly why we can’t treat pain with biology alone. While neuroscience has uncovered the circuitry, the neurotransmitters and the neural pathways involved in the mechanisms of pain, the subjective experience of pain remains deeply complex. What Next? Now, to make real progress in treatment of pain, we need to think bigger. Fields such as philosophy, literature, musicology, art, theology, and ritual theory all offer valuable insights into how pain is perceived, expressed, and ultimately, how it might be healed. Pain is as much about philosophy, psychology, anthropology—even art and ritual—as it is about neurons and nerve endings. And until we treat pain not as merely a biological process but a profoundly complex and layered human experience, we’ll keep missing the point, and the person who suffers.