Brain Over Pain? Stanford Researchers Say That Some People Can Control Their
Pain

12-14-2005

Learned Volitional Control Over Brain fMRI Activation and Pain Control over
brain activation and pain learned by using real-time functional MRI.

Published in: Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2005)

Study authors: deCharms, R. C., Maeda, F., Glover, G. H., Ludlow, D., Pauly, J.
M., Soneji, D., Gabrieli, J. D., and Mackey, S. C.

We all consciously and unconsciously control our brain for every activity we
initiate, every thought we have, and every emotion or sensation we experience.
Until recently, it has been unclear as to what extent we can learn to control
brain activity-more specifically, the activity of specific brain regions--and
what impact that control would have on us. Well-defined regions of the brain are
responsible for the perception of pain, and, in our pilot study, we sought to
answer two questions:

Can people learn to control a specific region in the brain involved in pain
perception known as the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC)?

Does learned control of the rACC lead to changes in pain in both healthy
subjects and in patients with chronic pain? Functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) is a tool that allows researchers to open windows into the brain
and "see" brain activity.

Until recently, fMRI data needed to be analyzed off-line with the results being
unavailable until many hours after the subject was scanned. Through software
developed by Dr. Christopher deCharms in collaboration with Stanford University,
we are now able to analyze the imaging data in near real time and show a subject
being scanned their own brain activity on a moment by moment basis.


Read the full article at
http://www.immunesupport.com/library/bulletinarticle.cfm?ID=6890