Parts of the nervous system are dedicated to transmit and process pain-related information to protect the body from potentially harmful stimuli. This nociceptive system is a powerful model system for studying the properties of the nervous system in health and disease from the molecular to the systemic and the behavioural levels. Virtually all state-of-the-art technologies of modern life sciences are presently used in pain research. It is an advantageous feature of the complex nociceptive system that it has well-defined input and output pathways. This much facilitates its exploration. Nociceptive afferents can be stimulated selectively and nociceptive output parameters can be assessed quantitatively with high precision. By virtue of its nature pain research is interdisciplinary linking neurobiologists to psychologists and physiologists to pain therapists to name a few. Since pain is a major personal, medical and social burden, justification of practice has never been a problem for pain research. Well-trained pain researchers are in great demand at research institutions, the pharmaceutical industry, medical institutions, public health organisations and top-class media.