![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/brainpain.jpg\")
The back pain has been with 32-year-old Laura Tibbitts ever since
\n she was thrown from a horse eight years ago sometimes a dull ache, sometimes
\n a sharp stab, yet always there.<\/p>\n
But recently, she found some relief using what may be the highest-tech
\n pain treatment there is: Strapped into an MRI scanner, she was able to
\n watch the activity levels in a part of her brain that helps control the
\n perception of pain. By watching that direct feedback from her brain, she
\n trained herself to moderate the pain.<\/p>\n
Tibbitts, a conference coordinator at Stanford University, was participating
\n in a new study that found that when people could see their own brains at
\n work, they gained new control over their pain.<\/p>\n
Though still highly experimental and not likely to become available for
\n several years, the method offers hope of a new option for the estimated
\n 50 million Americans who suffer chronic pain.<\/p>\n
The brain-watching method, now being explored in the Boston area and elsewhere,
\n could also offer a variety of other benefits for stroke patients, dyslexics,
\n and others, said imaging scientists.<\/p>\n
The brain-watching method, which used to be called from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading
\n bio-feedback, was being practiced in the Boston area by the Dowbrigade
\n and others 30 years ago. In an undergraduate
\n course in the then recently invented field of Psychophysiology – the relationship
\n and interface between mind and body – we actually built a bio-feedback rig
\n of our own out of parts we bought at Radio Shack and lifted from Stillman
\n Infirmary, and which we used to run a number of interesting experiments.
\n At the time, however, we were
\n more interested in studying pleasure than pain. Some things just keep getting
\n discovered, again and again, like the 10th planet in the solar system.<\/em><\/p>\n