Think Away Your Pain: Your Brain is the Solution to Your Pain by David Schechter

Author:David Schechter [Schechter, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-03T08:00:00+00:00

fMRI Research Studies

Regarding Point 5, modern imaging technology used on the brain is a key tool in proving this, up-until-now, nebulous connection between mind and body. It is interesting because imaging of the body has some value, but imaging of the brain and indirectly the mind might be where the true answers lie. A method of imaging you will read about here is fMRI or functional MRI scanning. Unlike regular MRI’s that show three dimensional images of the scanned region (the structures), functional MRI’s focus on the function in that region.

One aspect of function commonly measured is blood flow. Logically, the more blood flow to an area of the brain means that this area is being used. It is like looking at a building, where the power is on and being used, when the people are working.

Such studies have shown that the brain “parallel processes” emotional and physical pain. UCLA researchers, Drs. Eisenberger and Lieberman, have shown that social rejection lights up the brain regions in fMRI studies. This is important in the response to physical pain at the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex. (5) Social rejection is an emotional experience and physical pain is a “physical experience.” Yet in the brain there are very similar patterns of activity. This implies that physical pain and social rejection “hurt” in the same way. This relates to our ongoing point that what you feel and what you think greatly affects, and we believe can cause, your pain problem.

Dr. Lieberman from UCLA calls the anterior cingulate cortex the “neural alarm system.” From there, signals proceed to higher regions that act to deal with the pain. The right ventral pre-frontal cortex (RVPFC) helps dampen the emotional distress caused by pain. (5) Perhaps the program described later in this book and the work we do to change people’s perception of pain and reduce their fear enhances the dampening of the RVPFC.

A fascinating study by Derbyshire looked at pain generated from hypnotic suggestion. This experience of pain felt very real to the subjects. On the fMRI, changes were seen within the thalamus, Anterior cingulate (ACC), insula and prefrontal and parietal cortices. These findings “compare well with the activation patterns during pain from nociceptive (physical pain) sources” and provide the “first direct experimental evidence in humans linking specific neural activity with the immediate generation of a pain experience.” (6) The authors go on to comment: “The known interconnection of stress, negative affect and pain, inputs from higher neural centers, can expand, amplify or create pain symptoms. Taken together, these hypotheses and data raise the possibility that an experience of pain can originate exclusively within a subject’s brain or mind rather than being necessarily dependent on the pathology of peripheral tissue.”

This is truly a remarkable finding and conclusion that lends powerful neuro-imaging support to the TMS model/hypothesis. The pain is truly “in the brain.” This study appears to confirm the idea that pain can originate in the brain and does not require a physical injury to originate!

On his blog, Dr.

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