Pain Relief

Distraction As Pain Relief

Referred by the AMICOR Jorge Ossanai
Main Category: Pain / Anesthetics
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 19 May 2012 - 0:00 PD

Mental distractions make pain easier to take, and those pain-relieving effects aren't just in your head, according to a report published online in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. 

The findings based on high-resolution spinal fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) as people experienced painful levels of heat show that mental distractions actually inhibit the response to incoming pain signals at the earliest stage of central pain processing. 

"The results demonstrate that this phenomenon is not just a psychological phenomenon, but an active neuronal mechanism reducing the amount of pain signals ascending from the spinal cord to higher-order brain regions," said Christian Sprenger of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. /.../