Hi, I'm Max Shen.


I study how the nervous system learns chronic pain—and help people unlearn it.


Pain can be understood as a predictive signal, like hunger or fear. I am interested in using tools from active inference, phenomenology, and Bayesian statistics to characterize pain as a predictive signal. I also draw inspiration from Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Judith Blackstone's Realization Process, and Moshe Feldenkrais’ philosophy of the body for crafting practice techniques that can change the nature of the predictive signal. 


In my academic life, I've been mentored by Professor Wang at the MIT McGovern Institute, and have worked with both the Moral Psychology Research Lab at Harvard, and the Computational Cognitive Science Lab at MIT. 


My deep wish is to better understand and spread the knowledge and skills needed for resolving persistent pain. 


I write at essays.debugyourpain.com.


You can find me on X/Twitter. Email: mxslk[at]mit.edu


Ongoing:


Past


Works that have inspired me