Tricks the brain and stops feeling pain

• April 24, 2024

Do you ever, when you're doing repairs at home or for some other reason, get beaten a hand? These are very common accidents, but they do not stop being painful . Now, what would you think if we told you that when this happens to you, you can cheat the brain and stop feeling pain in a very easy way? Although you doubt this is possible.

First of all, what is the technique ?, very simple: if you it hurt a hand , just cross both arms in front of you. That is to say change them from position, that the right is on the left side and vice versa. That easy? Yes, as simple as it sounds.

Which is the secret ? When changing position hands you confuse to the brain and the pain relieves . According to the scientists of the University of London (UCL) in this way, the brain is cheated on the place where the pain .

A study, published in the magazine Pain (Pain), points out that this is because when placing the hand on the "wrong" side it interferes with the sensory perception of pain . For some time, several scientific teams have been investigating ways to confuse the brain. The UCL researchers carried out a experiment with 20 people. They used a To be to generate pain with a puncture of four milliseconds in the hands of the participants, without touching them. Each person classified the Pain intensity felt and at the same time the electrical responses of the brain using electroencephalography (EEG).

The results, both from the reports of the participants and from the EEG, showed that the perception of the pain It was weaker when the arms were crossed over the imaginary "middle line" that crosses the center of our body vertically.

Conflicting information

The doctor Giandomenico Iannetti , who led the study, states that the reason for this phenomenon is conflicting information between two of the brain maps : the one he uses for our body and the one he uses for external space.

"In daily life we ​​usually use the left hand to touch things on the left side in outer space and the right hand for things in right outer space, for example, if we take a glass of water located on our right side often we use the right hand. maps are used to working together to produce strong impulses in response to stimuli . When we cross our arms, the two maps are mismatched and the processing of the sensory information , which results in less pain. "

According to the scientist, the finding could lead to new clinical therapies to treat the pain that they exploit this brain confusion by representing the body.

As the doctor points out Iannetti , "Maybe the next time we get injured, we should not only rub the wound but also cross our arms."

Researchers are now testing this theory in patients who have chronic pain disorders. A spokesperson for the Foundation to Relieve Pain in the United Kingdom says that a lot of research is currently under way to try to find ways to confuse the brain interfering with the messages of pain.

Source: BBC World

Video Medicine: Pain Management | What happens in the brain when I feel pain? (April 2024).