Conversely, thinking about pain and stress actually creates it; real-time functional neuroimaging seems to be proving this phenomenon as well. To test this, researchers at Stanford University allowed subjects to watch their own brain activity as they were experiencing pain. The idea was to have them attempt to change it or take control of what they were feeling.
Dr. Sean Mackey, head researcher and director of Stanford’s Neuroscience and Pain Lab, explained that, in the study, participants could learn to control the activation and regulation of what they felt by interacting with the brain itself.
The first phase of the study looked at 12 subjects with chronic pain and 36 healthy subjects. The healthy participants were given a painful heat stimulus in the scanner, during which they tried to modulate their responses. The chronic-pain participants, however, simply worked to reduce their own agony. Those suffering from chronic pain who underwent neuroimaging training reported an average of 64 percent relief by the end of the study. “The purpose of this study is to show patients their mind matters,” said Mackey. “It’s reverse learned helplessness.”
Similarly, researcher Dr. Irene Tracey of Oxford University has shown that asking subjects who experience chronic pain to think about their aches will increase activation in their pain-perception circuits. Distraction, however, turned out to be a great analgesic. When Tracey’s volunteers were asked to engage in a complicated counting task while being subjected to a painful heat stimulus, she could watch the pain-perception matrix activity decrease while cognitive parts of the brain involved in counting lit up the screen.
Furthermore — and this is the main point — these techniques may offer a particular advantage over drug therapy, especially given the fact that it’s very difficult to design drugs targeted for fixing a problem in a specific region of the brain. For instance, opiate receptors are generally located in multiple networks and areas throughout the brain, which is partly why drugs almost always have side effects.
Imagine that your car is in need of oil, so instead of opening up the oil spout, you lift the hood of the car and start throwing oil over the entire engine. Some of it will get to where it needs to go, but the rest will affect parts of the car that don’t need it. Neuroimaging therapy teaches patients how to control the activity within a targeted and localized brain region, and really focus on that specific area for a desired outcome.
“The technique gives people a tool they didn’t know they had — cognitive control over neuroplasticity,” Mackey said. “We don’t fully understand how this feedback mechanism is working, but it provides tangible evidence that people can change something in their own brains, which can be very empowering. It takes Buddhist monks 30 years of sitting on a mountain learning to control their brains through meditation — we’re trying to jump-start that process.”
So, while neuroimaging therapy has been proved to treat pain, its potential to rewire the brain remains an area to be explored. In the meantime, remember that the mind and body are in fact connected, since the body achieves what the mind believes.
This article is updated from its initial publication in Brain World Magazine’s Spring 2014 issue.
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