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Håkan Olausson

Professor

Research

The Morrison Lab: The Embodied Brain Lab.

The Olausson Lab

Human touch is a powerful way of evoking emotions. What is the functional significance of the system for ultrafast nociceptors that we recently discovered? How does the nervous system distinguish social and self-touch? Our lab is looking for answers.

See the video about our research that can lead to new treatments for chronic pain

To map the pathways of pain and help cure everything from chronic pain to headaches, Håkan Olausson's team at Linköping University measures various pain impulses. Håkan and his research group have discovered that pain signals travel much faster than previously thought and that pain fibers are present throughout the entire body.

Håkan Olausson is interviewed during a study.
See the video on Youtube.

News

Male and female researcher in a lab.

Pain relief through artificial touch in new research project

Can a garment made from smart textiles relieve long-term pain? This is what researchers in neuroscience, materials science, pain research, textile science and biomechanics are seeking to find out in a new interdisciplinary research project.

How the nervous system distinguishes social touch

Two types of neurons in the skin may be particularly important for how the brain interprets social contact between people. Knowledge of how the nervous system processes social touch is important in order to develop ways to restore sensation.
A researcher is working together with a test subject.

Our sense of touch consists of 16 unique types of nerve cells

No less than 16 different types of nerve cells have been identified by scientists in a new study on the human sense of touch. Comparisons between humans, mice and macaques show both similarities and significant differences.

Publications

Latest publications generated through LiU DiVA

2025

Shan Xu, Steven C. Hauser, Saad Nagi, James A. Jablonski, Merat Rezaei, Ewa Jarocka, Andrew G. Marshall, Håkan Olausson, Sarah Mcintyre, Gregory J. Gerling (2025) Mechanoreceptive Aβ primary afferents discriminate naturalistic social touch inputs at a functionally relevant time scale IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, Vol. 16, p. 346-359 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2024

Huasheng Yu, Saad Nagi, Dmitry Usoskin, Yizhou Hu, Jussi Kupari, Otmane Bouchatta, Hanying Yan, Suna Li Cranfill, Mayank Gautam, Yijing Su, You Lu, James Wymer, Max Glanz, Phillip Albrecht, Hongjun Song, Guo-Li Ming, Stephen Prouty, John Seykora, Hao Wu, Minghong Ma, Andrew Marshall, Frank L. Rice, Mingyao Li, Håkan Olausson, Patrik Ernfors, Wenqin Luo (2024) Leveraging deep single-soma RNA sequencing to explore the neural basis of human somatosensation Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 27, p. 2326-2340 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Oumie Thorell, David Mahns, Jan Otto, Jaquette Liljencrantz, Mats Svantesson, Håkan Olausson, Saad Nagi (2024) Experimental nerve block study on painful withdrawal reflex responses in humans PLOS ONE, Vol. 19, Article e0309048 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

Related Research

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Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine at LiU

WCMM at LiU focuses on the medicine-technology interface, and build upon our existing strengths in research within medical technology, materials science and bioengineering.
Neurobiology

Center for Systems Neurobiology

Center for Systems Neurobiology is a strategic effort from Linköping University (LiU) and Region Östergötland aimed at strengthening research within the medical field.

Organisation

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Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience - CSAN

Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN) integrates knowledge and methodology from different areas of basic and clinical neuroscience.

Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (BKV)

What characterizes the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (BKV) is the wide breadth of research and education. BKV is one of the largest departments at LiU with affiliation mainly to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

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