The Brain Can Be Trained to Reduce Pain

There may be a high-tech way to teach people to handle chronic pain, scientists report.

They’re not talking about a sophisticated device that erases pain. Instead, they used medical technology to help patients learn how to develop mental coping devices that would allow them to train their brains to cope with, and reduce their experience of pain.

The strategy is in its early days, so it’s not ready for widespread use. Thorough tests are needed, the researchers note.

They describe their work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Coping With Pain

The study included 36 healthy students from Stanford University and 12 people in their 30s with chronic pain.

The pain patients had largely had little relief from other pain treatments (including painkillers and counseling).

Those who didn’t have chronic pain received pain exposure through heat applied to the palm of their left hand during the experiment.

The Golden Rules of Processing Pain