Brain imaging can distinguish fibromyalgia patients from healthy controls with high sensitivity and specificity, according to two papers published nearly simultaneously in Pain late last summer, by groups at the Universities of Colorado and Michigan, respectively. Somewhat surprisingly to the authors and others, in the Colorado study, which used both painful and nonpainful stimuli, the…
Pain Perception May Depend on Multiple Immediate-Environment Stimuli
Can merely crossing your fingers change the way your brain perceives pain when you touch different stimuli with three fingers? Perhaps so, according to a new study by UK-based researchers, when taken into context with the immediate environment. Changes in posture could potentially provide a way to influence chronic pain if basic science results lead…