How to Make Your Brain Forget Pain

Researchers have long known that the central nervous system will create a memory trace of pain in order to “remember” painful experiences. This memory trace will even magnify the feeling of the pain if it is experienced again. This system has plagued people with chronic pain caused by countless diseases and injuries. In fact, according to Terence Coderre of McGill University, “there’s evidence that any pain that lasts more than a few minutes will leave a trace in the nervous system.”

However, Coderre and his team of researchers have at long last found the key to the mechanism by which these traces are formed. They found that the levels of the protein kinase PKMzeta increases persistently in the brain upon painful stimulation. PKMzeta has been shown to play a critical role in forming and maintaining memory by strengthening neuronal connections. Coderre and his team were able to reverse the hypersensitivity to a pain that was developed by blocking the activity of PKMzeta. In addition, after erasing the pain memory trace, they discovered that persistent pain was reduced and sensitivity to touch was heightened. Coderre’s team is hopeful that pain medications in the future will be able to focus on blocking pain at the neuronal level.

I decided to cover this article because I believe that pain management research is not something most people think about, and this also highlights our ever increasing understanding of how the brain functions.