However, capsaicin can also paradoxically desensitize the nervous system to capsaicin itself and to other painful stimuli like heat. The burning sensation produced by capsaicin is its most familiar and celebrated trait, and one that is also exploited for such purposes as self-defense and bird feeder squirrel deterrence.

Spicy foods containing the pungent chemical capsaicin are dietary staples worldwide. Thermomimetic chemicals aid the discovery of thermosensitive ion channels The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which was shared by David Julius at the University of California, San Francisco, and Ardem Patapoutian at the Scripps Research Institute, fittingly recognized their breakthrough discoveries that helped to fill this critical gap in knowledge. However, the molecular mechanisms by which such physically distinct stimuli are detected and quantified remained enigmatic for several more decades. Studies in the mid-1900s confirmed the existence of distinct peripheral somatosensory neuron subpopulations differentially tuned to touch, temperature, and irritant chemicals that produce a range of innocuous and noxious perceptions. Charles Sherrington, 1932 Nobel laureate, proposed that our perception of physically diverse stimuli over different intensities as distinct sensations implied the existence of correspondingly distinct neuronal mechanisms to detect these stimuli ( 1).

Perceptions of touch, temperature, and pain inform us about our bodies’ condition and the world around us, and are critical determinants of our function, self-protection, comfort, and social interactions.

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