During week 38, researchers with expertise in neuroscience, pain medicine, textile technology and biomechanics gathered at Campus US in Linköping. The participants come from Linköping University and the Swedish School of Textiles – University of Borås and collaborate within the Touch Away The Pain (TATP) project.
"It's a real privilege to have experts from so many different fields, each contributing their unique expertise to the project," says Sarah McIntyre, researcher at the Centre for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN) at Linköping University.
The project aims to increase understanding of how touch influences pain. In 2025, it received SEK 30 million from the Swedish Research Council to establish an interdisciplinary research environment. Together, the researchers will investigate whether artificial touch delivered through innovative textiles can help relieve pain.
"I am studying how touch should be delivered to achieve the greatest pain relief, and I don't have to be limited by commercial or hand-held devices. Instead, I can use cutting-edge technology from actuation science and textile engineering and have something custom-built that targets the exact neural mechanisms we are interested in. At this meeting, I got to see that my colleagues are working on solutions I had previously assumed were impossible."
The project runs until 2030. In addition to Sarah McIntyre, key researchers from Linköping University include Edwin Jager, Håkan Olausson, Nazdar Ghafouri, and Jonas Stålhand.
Researchers Gathered in Linköping to Explore Artificial Touch for Chronic Pain
23 September 2026
Can artificial touch help relieve chronic pain? That is the question being explored by researchers in the Touch Away The Pain (TATP) project, whose third consortium meeting was recently held at Linköping University.
