Healthy people and those with chronic back pain perceive similar levels of discomfort from a hot rod placed on their backs. But, subconsciously, their brains send different signals.
Vania Apkarian of Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at two brain areas: the cortex, where conscious thought occurs, and the nucleus accumbens, which monitors reward. The hot rod induced similar responses in the cortex. However, when the heat was removed, activity in the nucleus accumbens increased in the healthy volunteers — signalling rewarding relief — but decreased in those with chronic back pain, indicating disappointment.
When asked, members of the latter group reported a lessening of their chronic back pain when subjected to the acute pain.
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Neuroscience: Relief from pain. Nature 464, 1106 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/4641106b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/4641106b
