The brain doesn’t feel pain, so where does the headache come from?

The brain has no nociceptors – the nerves that detect damage (or threat of damage) to our body and that signal the situation to our spinal cord and our brain. As a result, the belief that the latter does not feel any pain has taken shape, until entering popular culture.

In the movie Hannibal from 2001, a particularly disgusting scene depicts the eponymous serial killer cutting the brain of a perfectly conscious, although drugged, FBI agent.

“You see, the brain itself does not feel any pain”, explains Hannibal Lecter to a horrified Clarice Starling.

But if the brain is not in pain, what is causing the headache? …

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