FEEDBACK: RELIEF FROM CHRONIC PAIN MAY BE A THOUGHT AWAY
By Eric Nagourney
New York Times
December 20, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/20feed.html

People who have chronic pain may be able to reduce their suffering by using
brain-scanning equipment that lets them see their brain activity and try to
modify it, researchers say.

The process, which the researchers say may eventually prove useful as a
treatment, is described online in The Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences <http://www.pnas.org>.

For the study, the researchers asked a group of chronic pain sufferers to
view their brain activity on a functional M.R.I. scanner. A group of healthy
volunteers were given painful heat stimuli to the hand and were also
scanned.

The equipment was modified to allow the volunteers to see brain activity as
it occurred. The scanner was focused on a part of the brain involved in the
perception of pain, the rostral anterior cingulate cortex.

The researchers asked the volunteers to try to change the patterns they saw
on the screen, giving them suggestions for strategies. One chronic back pain
sufferer, for example, thought of little people digging out the pain.

After practice, the study found, the volunteers were able to make detectable
changes in the way their brains processed pain signals, and they reported
feeling less pain. The improvement was not found in members of control
groups who were given no M.R.I. information or who were shown images from
another part of the brain.

In the past, the study noted, people have learned to control other autonomic
functions like heart rate. But the study's senior author, Dr. Sean C. Mackey
of the Stanford University School of Medicine, urged caution in interpreting
the results.

Dr. Mackey said, "We still have a lot of work to do to prove that this has
long-term clinical efficacy."

The study, supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, was
led by R. Christopher DeCharms of Omneuron, a life-sciences technology
company. Dr. DeCharms is trying to develop the equipment for commercial use.

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