Pain is all in the mind. Well, pretty much everything is in the mind. It’s your brain that processes most any stimuli. That’s why when treating pain, there are two approaches. Ideally, you fix whatever problem is causing your pain. But that’s not always possible. The National Center for Health Studies finds that about 20% of US adults suffer from chronic pain. In these cases, you may be able to relieve the pain at its source, but you can’t fix the problem. To manage chronic pain, doctors often prescribe drugs to dull the perception of pain. In effect, pain is in your mind, and the drugs just make your mind ignore the pain.
There are many downsides to this approach. Even the most benign of drugs can have side effects. The best pain medicine is also habit-forming. Part of the reason we are in an opioid epidemic is the overuse of legitimately prescribed pain medicine. While drugs may be the only option for some people, scientists are always looking for better, safer treatment.
Bring on the cyborgs
A recent study from the New York University School of Medicine has demonstrated the effectiveness of a brain implant to treat pain. Granted, the study was in mice, but it still sounds like something out of science fiction. But, of course, those works of fiction usually revolve around the evil forces creating the perfect cyborg soldier incapable of feeling pain. Still, I’ll give the good people at NYU the benefit of the doubt with this one.
This technology is pretty wild. The researchers implanted a computer chip into the brains of mice. This chip was capable of detecting signals that cause the mouse to feel pain. Then, only after seeing the signal, emit a light pulse capable of overriding the signal. That second part is essential. The chip is more efficient, only expending the energy necessary to do the job and specific.
Efficiency is possibly the most vital part of this experiment. As you can imagine, implanting a computer chip into a brain is pretty invasive surgery. You don’t want to cut into someone’s head to replace a battery. Electronics also tend to burn hot. Cooking your brain from the inside would be bad.
Specificity means it is more likely to work in other species. The chip isn’t blocking all signals to the brain and making the mice just react to everything slower. It only blocks pain signals. It also doesn’t block all pain. Pain serves a purpose. It’s a warning. It says, “that thing you are doing? Stop!” Without pain, you might end up doing things that damage your body.
How do you know a mouse is in pain?
Unless they are trying to take over the world, and animated, mice aren’t exactly known for their ability to speak. So just how do you know whether or not a mouse is experiencing pain? You torture them, of course.
Ok, it’s only light torture. The researchers exposed the mouse to potential pain. Similar to how you might, and should, quickly remove your hand when you touch a hot stove, the researchers exposed the mouse’s paw to a heat source. When it removes its paw, it is experiencing pain. How quickly it removes its paw is how much pain it felt. On average, the mice with the pain chip pulled their paw slower than the ones without.
“Ah!” you might say, “that doesn’t test chronic pain!” Well, you got me there. But you didn’t get the fine researchers at NYU. To test against chronic pain, the researchers set up a double chamber. On one side, the chip turned one when it sensed pain. On the other, the chip turned on randomly. The mice tended to spend more time on the side where the chip blocked pain.
Mice aren’t human
All this is really cool, but it doesn’t mean it will translate to humans. I don’t think it has to work in humans to be cool. Come on! We were able to use computers to change how an animal’s brain works! I don’t know how you’d think that isn’t cool. But it is promising it could work in humans.
Pain is almost universal. So we hope that the part of the brain that experiences pain is similar enough between different animals, or at least different mammals, that the technology can be adapted to other animals and, eventually, humans.
It may be that nothing comes of this. But, even if we don’t get treatment for chronic pain out of this research, it still advances our knowledge of how the brain works. With any luck, we can use this knowledge to help those suffering from chronic pain. And who knows? This research could lead to treatment for any number of neurologic issues. Bring on our bright cyborg future!