Remember that great time when you were a kid and weren’t in pain? You might want to try it the next time you get a boo-boo, as Chinese scientists have discovered that thinking about happy memories can help us feel less pain.

Have you ever observed that looking at images of happy times spent with family or friends helps to relieve headache pain? A new study has uncovered the thalamocortical mechanism underlying nostalgia-induced analgesia.

The research team, led by Dr. KONG Yazhuo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Psychology, discovered that the thalamus, a vital brain region for pain modulation, is also linked to the analgesic effect associated with nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a self-conscious, perhaps bittersweet, but primarily positive social emotion characterized by sentimental longing for one’s past. When dealing with the negative effects of stressful conditions, nostalgia might help us retain a pleasant psychological state. Nostalgia serves a variety of adaptive roles, one of which is pain alleviation.

The current study used a nostalgia-related functional MRI paradigm (i.e., nostalgia vs. control cues when people viewed pictures) in conjunction with heat-pain stimulation (i.e., low heat vs. high heat when people felt pain) to examine how pain-induced brain responses were modulated after people experienced nostalgic emotion.

Following the observation of childhood memory triggers, individuals reported experiencing decreased feelings of pain in response to heat stimuli, particularly at low stimulus intensities.

The anterior thalamus, in particular, encodes nostalgia, whereas the posterior parietal thalamus encodes pain perception. The activity of the anterior thalamus can anticipate the activation of the posterior parietal thalamus.

“The thalamus plays a key role as a central functional linkage in the analgesic effect,” Dr. ZHANG Ming, first author of the study said.

When subjects saw photographs, the intensity of their nostalgia was also highly associated with the connection between the thalamus and the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a gray matter area located in the midbrain. When patients were in pain, the connection between PAG and the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex predicted pain perception. This suggests that the thalamus controls nociceptive inputs and is involved in the brain-stem analgesic pathway’s activation.

Occasionally, individuals suffer minor clinical pain that is unpleasant but not severe enough to warrant medicine. Non-drug analgesic pain treatment approaches can be beneficial or even vital in these situations.

This research illuminates the neural mechanisms underlying nostalgia-induced pain relief, offering new insights into the development and improvement of non-drug, psychological analgesia.

Source: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2123-21.2022

Image Credit: Getty

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