It is established that distracting mental activities can minimize perception of pain, but how this happens has not been well understood. A study published in Current Biology online has found that it is related to a spinal process involving opioid neurotransmission.
A study of 20 men with an average age of 27 found that distraction not only takes the focus away from the pain, but can dampen the body’s initial physiological response to pain through endogenous opioids.
Painful levels of heat were administered to the subject while undergoing functional MRIs. Those doing complex memory tasks were pre-occupied to the extent that they experienced 19% less pain than those doing simpler mental tasks.
“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 lead author Christian Sprenger, of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.
Sprenger and his colleagues repeated the experiment with another group of 15 men, average age 25. This time they administered naloxone to block opioid effect or saline solution. Perception of pain was 40.5% greater for those with the difficult cognitive task when given the opioid antagonist naloxone. This provided the evidence that endogenous opioids play a role in the distraction phenomenon.
“Our findings strengthen the role of cognitive-behavioral therapeutic approaches in the treatment of pain diseases, as it could be extrapolated that these approaches might also have the potential to alter the underlying neurobiological mechanisms as early as in the spinal cord,” Sprenger and colleagues concluded.
For more information see the May 17, 2012 online issue of Current Biology.
This article was originally published in Pathways Physician & Health Professional Bulletin - Issue 25. To download this issue in PDF format, or past issues, visit our newsletter archives online at www.pathwayshealth.org/publications.
New Love
The dizzy stage of early romantic love seems to reduce the sensation of physical pain. So say the results of research at Stanford University School of Medicine. The participants reported significantly lower levels of pain when looking at pictures of their beloved than when viewing photos of friends.
“Love engages very deep primitive reward systems that directly impact on our overall experience of pain,” says researcher Sean Mackey, whose team looked at the effects of romantic feelings on pain.
Fifteen students, aged 19-21, who were in the first nine months of a romantic relationship and described themselves as “intensely in love” were recruited for the experiment. They were instructed to bring a photo of their sweetheart as well as one of a good-looking acquaintance of the same sex as the sweetheart.
While sitting in an MRI scanner to record their brain activity, the students held a block whose temperature could be controlled to cause high, moderate or no pain. Their pain ratings were noted while focusing on the picture of their loved one, the acquaintance, and a word-puzzle distraction.
Both the photos of romantic partners and the distraction puzzle reduced pain by nearly identical amounts. But the students had significantly less pain relief when looking at the photos of the attractive acquaintance.
Although the sweetheart photos and word puzzles both provided relief, they worked in different parts of the brain. The part of the brain activated by love was the brain’s reward center which is also activated by chocolate and drugs like cocaine.
It turns out that the writers of all those romantic songs and poems were right—love truly is a powerful thing.
This article was originally published in Pathways & Partners - Issue 25. To download this issue in PDF format, or past issues, visit our newsletter archives online at www.pathwayshealth.org/publications.
Focusing on music can distract people who have significant anxiety about pain enough that they feel the pain less acutely, according to a recent study done at the University of Utah Pain Research Center. The study found that pain was reduced as the demands of focusing on the task rose.
Researchers had 153 volunteers concentrate on following a melody so they could identify the tones that stood out. During the session small pain shocks were administered through fingertip electrodes. The authors explained that the effects of the music resulted from competition with the participants’ pain pathways.
Interestingly, those who had registered the most anxiety about pain became more absorbed in the task and were more likely to experience reduced perception of pain. The study authors suggested that, “Clinicians should consider patients’ personality characteristics when recommending behavioral interventions like music listening for pain relief.”
Pathways has volunteers that can provide music sessions to our hospice patients as part of our Integrative Therapies program of care for body and soul.
The results were published in the December, 2011 issue of the Journal of Pain.
