When you experience pain anywhere in your body, it triggers a specific area of your brain called the lateral occipital complex (LOC), this action interferes with your ability to concentrate and accurately recognize images. New research that utilizes
brain scans shows some interesting data on pain.
The study, published in the July 5 issue of Neuron, gives us a better understanding of how pain interferes with concentration.
Researchers at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, in Germany, required volunteers to carry out a cognitive task distinguishing images, as well as a memory task that involved the recall of specific images. During this process, the researchers zapped the volunteers' hands with a laser beam that inflicted varying levels of pain.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tests or brain scans of the volunteers' brain function during the tasks identified the LOC as a region that participates in both working memory activities and pain. The LOC is also the key location where our brains process images.
Further searching aided researchers in the discovery of a second brain area called the rostral anterior cortex, which is responsible for processing pain. This region was also stimulated during the tests. The researchers' hypothesis was that this area of the brain could interfere with the LOC when you are in pain.
Brains scans are leading the way for researchers to provide us with a more in depth look into the brain and how it works.
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