Video narration
A pulse blooms behind your eyes, and it feels like pain is coming from the brain itself. But can the brain actually feel pain? Inside this tissue, neurons flash and signals race-but there is a crucial absence. Brain tissue has no nociceptors-the receptors that detect damaging stimuli. That is the twist: the apparent source of a headache cannot detect pain within itself. Instead, pain can begin in structures around it: blood vessels, protective membranes, muscles, and nerves. Pain signals from those tissues travel through nerves toward the brain. The brain then processes those signals, turning them into the experience you recognize as pain. So the brain can understand pain without sensing injury in its own tissue. At the center of a headache, the organ doing the interpreting is strangely silent. Your brain processes the pain-but the pain comes from the tissues around it.