Studies Suggest the Mind Makes, Breaks Its Misery

Pain, like beauty, is in the mind's eye.

It is altered by empathy and tempered by faith, three new brain-imaging studies suggest.

The bewitching effect of belief can alter directly how strongly people feel pain, causing measurable changes in brain cells and synapses whether the torment is theirs or a loved one's.

The new findings, made public today by independent research teams at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, UCLA, and University College London, offer the strongest evidence yet of how the brain thinks about pain.

Mapping the neural anatomy of pain, the researchers documented the ways in which the brain created a world of its own from the raw material of physical sensation.

Using medical imaging scanners to monitor brain activity, researchers at Michigan, UCLA and Princeton revealed that simple faith in a placebo could alter the neural circuits that process pain, easing the agony.

In a separate experiment, the researchers at University College showed that the brain was a mirror of suffering, reflecting through many of the same neural circuits the pain that others feel, much as if the sensation were its own genuine torment.

Indeed, the brain's ability to share another's response to pain at such a fundamental cellular level may be the key to a sense of empathy, the personality trait that underpins so many human relationships, researchers said.

"These brain regions are critical to the interplay between the outside world and you," said neuropsychologist Helen Mayberg at Emory University in Atlanta.

By directly monitoring mental activity, the researchers showed how expectations and anticipation molded the brain's response to the physical sensation of pain.

To a certain degree, pain is an act of imagination.

"We are zeroing in on some pathways where our thoughts and beliefs are changing our physical and emotional experience," UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman said. "We don't typically think of those as things we can control."

Each team used brain mapping techniques to survey the same neural terrain from three slightly different perspectives.

Two of the studies were published today in the journal Science. The third will be published next month in Neuroimaging.

To better understand pain and empathy, a team led by social psychologist Tania Singer at the Institute of Neurology at University College tested 19 couples who, because they were romantically involved, could be expected to be attuned to each other.