The pain is all in the brain!
August 09, 2004 London

Researchers at the University college London, have found that people under a hypnotic spell are capable of imagining the same kind of pain as actual physical pain thus stressing the fact that certain kind of pain originates in the brain rather than the body.

This study may help doctors to determine the cause of medically unexplained pain such as chronic low back pain, which continues to baffle medical men.

The study by University College London and University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre found that volunteers who felt pain as a result of hypnotic suggestion showed strikingly similar brain activity to those subjected to actual pain.

"The fact that hypnosis was able to induce a genuine painful experience suggests that some pain really can begin in our minds. People reporting this type of pain are not simply imagining it," Dr. David Oakley, Director of University College of London's Hypnosis Unit was quoted as saying. (ANI)