“According to research by University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists, the brain has a way to suppress chronic pain when an animal is hungry, allowing it to go look for food while leaving intact the response to acute pain.”
Read more here.
“A Neural Circuit for the Suppression of Pain by a Competing Need State” Cell (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.02.057 , www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)30234-4