Brain scans to identify and measure pain levels

Scientists are optimistic that they will one day be able to measure emotions such as anxiety, sadness and anger, after a team of US researchers used brain scans to identify and measure pain levels in patients, as well as determine the effectiveness of treatments.

The results of their study were published in the April 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Tor Wager, a neurologist at the University of Colorado and the head of the research team, said that in the current treatment of diseases, there is still no official method to measure the level of pain or emotions of patients, other than the traditional method of asking the patient directly. However, this method is not really reliable because the patient's words often have subjective elements.

The team of scientists conducted four experiments on 144 healthy volunteers. These volunteers were asked to endure different levels of heat, from warm to very hot, on their arms, while scientists monitored their brains using magnetic resonance imaging.

During the experiment, scientists discovered that the human brain emits a distinct nerve signal every time it feels pain. Based on this signal, scientists can determine the patient's pain level with 90-100% accuracy.

In other related experiments, the authors also discovered that this brain signal is only emitted when the patient is in physical pain and shows the effect of painkillers. When volunteers are injected with painkillers, the observation shows that the nerve signals expressing pain emitted from the brain decrease.

The method of measuring pain levels by brain CT scan still needs to be studied further before being widely applied, however, scientists hope that in the future, this new discovery will help alleviate the pain of human diseases as well as promote scientific research in this field./.

According to (TTXVN) - VT