I’ve been writing about some heavy stuff recently, so I thought it would be a good time to share something that makes me feel really hopeful:
Christopher deCharms is a neuroscientist and entrepreneur who, along with other prominent researchers such as Dr. Sean Mackey, is paving the way towards using brain imaging to study and treat chronic pain.
deCharms founded a company, Omneuron, which has developed something called rtfMRI, or “real-time functional MRI.”
In studies of chronic pain patients, this new technology allows researchers to see exactly which area’s of a patient’s brain are the most active, and how this activity can change from moment to moment, depending on what the patient is instructed to do.
We know that the brains and nervous systems of chronic pain sufferers function differently from people who aren’t in pain– now this technology allows us to see how.
deCharms explains,
There have (historically) been three ways to try to impact the brain: the therapist’s couch, pills and the knife. This is a fourth alternative that you are soon going to have.
We all know that as we form thoughts, they form deep channels in our minds and in our brains. Chronic pain is an example. If you burn yourself, you pull your hand away. But if you’re still in pain in six months’ or six years’ time, it’s because these circuits are producing pain that’s no longer helping you.
If we can look at the activation in the brain that’s producing the pain, we can form 3D models and watch in real time the brain process information, and then we can select the areas that produce the pain.
Just as there are parts of the brain which can produce the experience of pain, there are also parts of the brain which can “turn down the volume” on pain, so to speak.
There are a few mechanisms by which the brain can inhibit pain signals. One powerful way is through the production of our own endogenous opiates– chemicals which our own brain produces to block pain. (These chemicals are what opiate medications such as Percoset and Oxycontin are trying to mimic).
Omneuron is researching ways which patients can learn to “turn up the volume” on the parts of their brain which inhibit the sending of pain signals.
As deCharms explains in this additional interview:
There is a built-in dial in the brain, that, when you turn it up… pain goes away. So we hope that when we can teach people to control these systems, to control this dial in the brain, they can make the brain go down.
He explains that many of his patients report feeling empowered simply by seeing images of the pain activity in their brains on the screen. For so long, they had felt as though the people in their lives didn’t believe them about how much pain they were in, and there, on the screen, was proof.
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I really find this topic to be so fascinating, not to mention inspiring.
If you’d like to know more, I actually have a whole section within my “Resources” page on how fMRI is being used to study and treat chronic pain. (I have links to a bunch more articles, as well as some interesting talks by other prominent researchers).
Hope you’ll check it out!
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