'Adjust the brain' to treat chronic pain

Exploiting the brain's ability to regulate pain can help its patients without resorting to high doses.

Brain restructuring?

Currently, the United States is facing the crisis of people addicted to painkillers with a degree of spread like epidemics. Under these circumstances, scientists are looking for new ways to treat pain without resorting to high-dose and dangerous opioids like opioids.

Some researchers even intend to create invasive therapies to eliminate pain. They use a way to go straight into the brain and refactor its pain and its stages. If successful, this study will bring hope to more than 25 million people suffering from chronic pain.

An interesting thing is that the brain has the ability to regulate pain. Scientists are hoping to harness this potential of the brain to help people with chronic disease control their pain. David Linden, professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, humorously said: "The brain can say: 'Hey. Endure the pain that is coming. But it can also be said. : 'Oh no', reduce the intensity of the pain and forget it. '

Change brain circuits to eliminate pain.(Photo: NICHD).

We can see similar reactions in trauma cases. For example, when fighting hard, the soldiers didn't realize they were injured; or those who are experiencing adrenaline levels are not aware of the pain they are experiencing. When studying the causes of these interesting cases, Brown University researchers found that some people can learn proper behavior to eliminate pain.

Stephanie Jones, assistant professor of neuroscience at Brown University, said: "There is a combination of the front part of the brain - the area that controls brain activity, and the sensory part of the brain - undertake the function of filtering information from the environment. ' She also discovered that teaching meditation techniques for those suffering from chronic pain will help them 'rewrite' their pain, as well as control. how the brain responds to those pain.

Adjust pain without taking medicine

Researchers are also looking for other methods that can help monitor the patient's brain circuits, not only for treating pain but also for treating other diseases.

Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA is one of the few medical centers that uses transcranial electromagnetic stimulation in the treatment of depression and is FDA approved. This method uses direct pulses directly into the patient's brain.

Dr Ian Cook, director of the UCLA Depression Health and Research Program, said: "We are really changing the way the brain circuits are arranged, as well as how they 'communicate' with each other."

'The brain is an amazingly changeable organ. In fact, every time we learn something new, we can easily detect physical changes in the brain structure , 'he added. Treatments similar to this study may open a door to future treatment without depending on painkillers.