There is no pain as bad as your own pain but new research has shown that a large part of the experience is psychological. It has also proven that men and women process information about pain in very different ways.
Our new understanding of how the brain handles pain comes through the use of advanced brain scanning devices, stated Dr Anthony Jones of the University of Manchester. He told a session of the British Association's Festival of Science, in a paper entitled "Imaging the Ouch", how these studies had mapped the parts of the brain associated with pain.
This "pain matrix" has two separate channels that process pain signals, the lateral and the medial, he said. "We know that the lateral system is processing the 'where is it' and the medial is processing the 'how bad is it', emotional aspects of the pain."
This allows the brain to respond to the physical part of the pain - the signals coming via the nerves - but also the psychological dimension. This related to things such as how much a person pays attention to the pain, previous experiences of pain and whether they are distracted from it.
The strong psychological dimension of pain could be seen when test subjects were given placebo painkillers, which contained no functioning drug, he said. Some 20-60 per cent of people report a reduction in pain levels after taking a placebo.
Brain research is also revealing more about natural opiate-like pain killers produced in the brain, endorphins. Men and women respond to these in different ways, Dr Jones said.
This work could deliver an entirely new kind of pain killer linked to endorphins, he added.
Endorphins limit pain sensations but then break down quickly. A new drug has been developed that slows the endorphin breakdown process, allowing them to block pain for longer. Phase I safety trials for the drug are planned for next year.