Break through in brain pain region

The actual region of the brain which registers pain has been identified by German researchers in a discovery which could eventually lead to effective means of reducing or even eliminating chronic pain which hinders thinking.

The researchers have pinpointed the brain region responsible for the brain’s ability to affect the thinking process which is distinct from a region that causes interference because of a distracting memory task.

Volunteers performed a cognitive task which involved distinguishing images as well as a working memory task involving remembering images. They experienced different levels of pain caused by a harmless laser beam on their hands and were brain-scanned to determine the levels of brain activity.

The experiments identified both a working memory load and pain and then identified the specific section of the brain region which processed pain. This section is part of the anterior cingulate cortex which plays an important part in ‘executive’ functions such as attention control.

The ongoing brain research is being carried out by Ulrike Bingel and colleagues at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf and they published their new findings recently in the journal Neuron.