BehindTheMedspeak: Can you learn to control your own pain?

Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine's Department of Anesthesia Pain Management Center performed a complex, potentially far-reaching study of how ordinary people might learn to take consciously take control of the brain's pain centers to decrease their perceived perception of pain.

The interdisciplinary team of investigators have backgrounds in electrical engineering, psychology, radiology, anesthesiology and pain management,

Long story short: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe brain activity in real time, the scientists trained a group of healthy research subjects experiencing mild, experimentally–induced pain to alter their brain activity while they watched a visual representation of their fMRI output.

The results of Part 1 of the study thus showed the scientists that "subjects could learn to voluntarily control brain activity in a specific brain region."

In Part 2, 8 patients with chronic intractable pain received the same training and real–time fMRI feedback: they noted significant decreases in perceived pain.

The investigators concluded that "people can learn to strengthen the function of a specific region of the brain and, through that change, the regions associated with the perception of pain. Is is similar to exercising muscles, but, in this case, the 'muscle' is an area in the brain."

Ever so gradually, functions once considered autonomic and not subject to voluntary control are losing their "walled-off" status.

I predict that most — if not all — physiological functions will ultimately become subject to our conscious manipulation.

Here is a link to the research group's findings as reported on its own website.

Here is a link to the paper reporting their results; it was just published in the December issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[via AW]