According to U.S. researchers chronic discomfort can be reduced by brain manipulation and people in chronic pain can "think away" their suffering by learning to manipulate the activity of the brain.
Apparently scientists at Stanford University in California, have successfully taught eight patients to reduce pain from injuries by showing them live scans of their brains while they performed a set of mental exercises.
Their findings have opened up new possibilities for treating chronic pain, which often responds poorly to standard therapy and leaves patients suffering throughout their entire lives.
The study suggests that it may be possible to train people to change the way in which the pain centers of the brain process painful stimuli, making the perception of pain less intense.
Sean Mackey, who led the research, says that pain has a huge impact on individuals, their families and society.
Mackey believes, even though significantly more science and testing must be done before this can be considered a treatment for chronic pain, the discovery could dramatically change people’s lives.
Dr Mackey’s team used a new scanning technique, known as real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging, to capture live images of activity in a part of the brain called the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, that handles painful stimuli.
As the patients watched the scans, they did mental exercises designed to alter brain activity and reduce pain.
The goal was to train the brain to process pain in a different way, so that the patients would experience it less severely.
What the scans did was to allow the subjects to see what effect their thoughts were having on a small region of the brain, helping them to concentrate on changing its activity.
Dr Mackey says they were asked to think about changing the meaning of the pain, and instead of thinking of it as a terrible experience, to think of it as something relatively pleasant.
He says over time, the subjects showed an increased ability to modulate their pain.