Brain Pain Mind Control

The back pain has been with 32-year-old Laura Tibbitts ever since
she was thrown from a horse eight years ago sometimes a dull ache, sometimes
a sharp stab, yet always there.

But recently, she found some relief using what may be the highest-tech
pain treatment there is: Strapped into an MRI scanner, she was able to
watch the activity levels in a part of her brain that helps control the
perception of pain. By watching that direct feedback from her brain, she
trained herself to moderate the pain.

Tibbitts, a conference coordinator at Stanford University, was participating
in a new study that found that when people could see their own brains at
work, they gained new control over their pain.

Though still highly experimental and not likely to become available for
several years, the method offers hope of a new option for the estimated
50 million Americans who suffer chronic pain.

The brain-watching method, now being explored in the Boston area and elsewhere,
could also offer a variety of other benefits for stroke patients, dyslexics,
and others, said imaging scientists.

The brain-watching method, which used to be called
bio-feedback, was being practiced in the Boston area by the Dowbrigade
and others 30 years ago. In an undergraduate
course in the then recently invented field of Psychophysiology – the relationship
and interface between mind and body – we actually built a bio-feedback rig
of our own out of parts we bought at Radio Shack and lifted from Stillman
Infirmary, and which we used to run a number of interesting experiments.
At the time, however, we were
more interested in studying pleasure than pain. Some things just keep getting
discovered, again and again, like the 10th planet in the solar system.

from the Boston Globe