Brain Waves Can Tell Us How Much Pain Someone Is In 70
A study published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that brain signals can be used to detect the severity of chronic pain, potentially leading to the development of personalized therapies for individuals suffering from severe pain conditions. MIT Technology Review reports: Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, implanted electrodes in the brains of four people with chronic pain. The patients then answered surveys about the severity of their pain multiple times a day over a period of three to six months. After they finished filling out each survey, they sat quietly for 30 seconds so the electrodes could record their brain activity. This helped the researchers identify biomarkers of chronic pain in the brain signal patterns, which were as unique to the individual as a fingerprint. Next, the researchers used machine learning to model the results of the surveys. They found they could successfully predict how the patients would score the severity of their pain by examining their brain activity, says Prasad Shirvalkar, one of the study's authors.
"The hope is that now that we know where these signals live, and now that we know what type of signals to look for, we could actually try to track them noninvasively," he says. "As we recruit more patients, or better characterize how these signals vary between people, maybe we can use it for diagnosis." The researchers also found they were able to distinguish a patient's chronic pain from acute pain deliberately inflicted using a thermal probe. The chronic-pain signals came from a different part of the brain, suggesting that it's not just a prolonged version of acute pain, but something else entirely.
"The hope is that now that we know where these signals live, and now that we know what type of signals to look for, we could actually try to track them noninvasively," he says. "As we recruit more patients, or better characterize how these signals vary between people, maybe we can use it for diagnosis." The researchers also found they were able to distinguish a patient's chronic pain from acute pain deliberately inflicted using a thermal probe. The chronic-pain signals came from a different part of the brain, suggesting that it's not just a prolonged version of acute pain, but something else entirely.
Brain Waves (Score:2)
Mercy craves
Lathered staves
Profile saves
Burma Shave(s)
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What would happen if.... (Score:3)
You pumped the inverse wave back into the skull via electrodes?
Will it neutralize the pain?
Re:What would happen if.... (Score:5, Informative)
The question wasn't nonsensical. From TFA: "The team hopes that mapping individuals’ biomarkers will make it possible to better target therapeutic use of electrical brain stimulation, a treatment Shirvalkar likens to turning pain on or off like a thermostat." I think Shirvalkar is talking about deep brain stimulation, which requires implanted electrodes, but it's also conceivable that you could use a noninvasive technology like transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
It's not as simple as "use an inverse wave", but there *are* ways to use TMS to induce or suppress activity in a specific part of the brain.
Re:What would happen if.... (Score:4, Informative)
For many chronic pain patients, myself included, if getting implanted electrodes would allow the pain to be stopped without taking drugs, I'd be first in line for the surgery! The pills are often little better than a placebo for a lot of us. Even if pain pills will kill our pain, stupid restrictions in the US, you often cannot get sufficient amounts of pain medication to properly deal with your pain, if you can get your doctor to prescribe them at all! I'm always having to ration my pain medication, preventing me from getting the relief I could receive due to an arbitrary limit placed on pain medication dosages that cannot be adjusted according to patient's individual conditions, such as certain pain conditions that have a known side effect of opioid resistance and, in my case, on top of that, a family history of broad-base medication resistance, including opioids (and well documented, but due to arbitrary limits, it doesn't matter for my treatment plan).
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Been living with pain for 18+ years... Stopped medication almost immediately after surgery because bits of missing spine are bits of missing spine and pills won't fix that. Masking the pain leads to further injury which requires more medication to mask... A game I have zero interest in playing..
Pain serves a purpose. Ignoring it is not a long-term strategy. Accepting it as a permanent feature of life and working within the new set of limitations is far healthier.
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I see you're one of those people that "because this is my situation, it applies to you too," which is absolute bullshit. Without pain medications, the only solution that would work, as agreed upon by several of my doctors, is suicide. So you're suggesting, due to your personal experience, that I should stop taking pain medication and kill myself? I'm sure there are plenty of assholes out there that would say yes. I say to those people, I hope one day you have to deal with a situation like mine. We'll s
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So you're suggesting, due to your personal experience, that I should stop taking pain medication and kill myself?
i) Stated this absolutely nowhere but thanks for putting words in my mouth.
ii) My point as stated is that masking the pain almost always leads to further damage. Our fear of pain is a significant driver behind the pain-management market and letting it own our lives is a me problem not an us problem.
iii) But seriously.. get counselling. Or a hobby. Or something productive to combat the evident depression.
Re:What would happen if.... (Score:4, Interesting)
100% me too. I'm on Oxycodone and Morphine, at levels that would astonish your average street junkie. I once worked out that I could make thousands of pounds a month selling my medication at street prices! Of course, I wouldn't ever do that because getting rid of the pain is more important than anything in my life, including money. I'm lucky that I live in the UK, and all of my meds (including blood pressure, thyroid, anxiety stuff etc.) costs me just £11 a month. I have every sympathy for those in the USA with chronic pain - I can't imagine how awful it must be to choose between one's pain meds or to use the money to keep the house warm in winter etc. Anyway, As with TheReaperD I would fight my way to the front of the queue for brain implants. Zap me all you want - if it stops the pain then my life would be totally different. I don't even care if you erase 20 years of memories by accident... as I say, getting rid of the pain is the most important thing.
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Since zapping the pain is a long way off, the US can settle for a consolation price of having an objective measurement tool to decide that patients really do need pain medication (when they do). Of course it probably isn't 100% consistent and people with a genuine need will be denied medication.
Right now, the US handles drug abuse problems by limiting manufacturing. An utterly ridiculous situation where people with actual prescriptions can't fill them. Same thing is happening with ADHD medications right
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"Simple" pain meds like opioids are actually dirt cheap in the USA. Some of the neuropathic ones are over $500/mo though, and not covered by insurance (because "insurance" in the USA gets to choose whether or not it pays for anything). So yeah, I know plenty of chronic pain patients who simply can't afford to fully medicate, and are forced to live in misery instead.
The bigger problem is as GP says though: because of the "Opioid Crisis" political theater bullshit, doctors are essentially barred from prescrib
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Because I have to take name brand Lyrica due to the generics having less than 50% efficacy for some stupid reason, if I had to pay the cost out of pocket, it would be $1,500/month. What's more, the cost of the drug is not based off dosage at all, which indicates that the price is entirely artificial. The executives of these drug companies should be lynched since it seems they'll never see a day in prison for their actions. The US is strange. Commit murder because some guy molested your kid: Prison for
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Yep, I'm on Pregablin also (what you call Lyrica, as far as I know). I'm on the generics, and at the moment am only on 100mg a day, but my doctor is titrating it up; I would estimate 300mg would actually help make the pain bearable (in conjunction with the oxycodone, morphine in pill form and liquid oramorph). Oh, and Duloxetine. And the blood pressure ones, thyroid stuff and 2 anxiety pills. It's a crazy concoction - the result of having 15 doctors in 5 years (because they all quit the surgery I'm register
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Hi Joe,
Read your post and have a suggestion that may help. Have you tried regular exercise to boost your energy and help you fight the chronic tiredness? If not, I would suggest some weight lifting - from my own and other poker players experiences (poker players need to be mentally sharp and energized for very long periods of time - especially for multi-day tournaments) weight lifting works for a lot of us. Not body builder type lifting, but just general strengthening and toning. Makes a huge difference
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If you take enough to kill all the pain, don't you just build a tolerance for the pills so the pain comes back and now you need a bigger dosage?
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If you take enough to kill all the pain, don't you just build a tolerance for the pills so the pain comes back and now you need a bigger dosage?
"It depends". If your doctor is competent, and you have a similar response to different opioid types, you can cycle between e.g. hydrocodone and oxycodone and give the receptors time to recover.
If your doctor is incompetent though, or only one of them works for you, the problem is much worse than "you need a bigger dosage" - you can burn the receptors out completely, such that one type no longer works at all - and the recovery time for that appears to be "effectively never".
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I'm now on buprenorphine, a methadone analog. It works better than traditional opioids for my most severe pain condition (I have more than one) and it has a happy side effect of stopping the burning and itching of my skin (this is NOT a listed effect of the drug), but it's works poorly on my more physical pain which is bad because my pain tolerance exceeded its maximum years ago so any additional pain is terrible. It means never drinking alcohol again, but I can live with that. What I actually need, agre
If the voltage and amps are high enough (Score:2)
The patient will feel no pain anymore instantly.
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The patient will feel no pain anymore instantly.
Because it would kill them?
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If you believe in homeopathy, sure. You just have to lower the amplitude to a fraction and shake the patient.
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Emotional Pain (Score:3)
I wonder if it bears a striking resemblance in waveform
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Re:Emotional Pain (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall reading about other studies that shows little distinction on the source of pain.
The US Army had problems with drug abuse during the Vietnam war, abuse that didn't always continue after soldiers returned. Studies showed that the drugs were to relieve emotional pain, and acted on the body like any pain from physical injury. Those that came home and were able to readjust didn't continue their drug abuse. Those that came home to difficulties still had the emotional pain that lead to seeking drugs for relief. This lead to changes in how soldiers were returned from deployment. The biggest change is that soldiers were kept on a stateside base for weeks to months to make sure they had adjusted well. Some of this would be idle convalescent time but also could be time for training. Soldiers could then be observed for any health problems, physical or mental, and get treatment before separation or redeployment.
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Almost certainly [nih.gov].
Super great (Score:3)
More knowledge used by torturers in the dark future, and no one else. Like those cartel guys that burn their victim alive and use doctors to keep them alive as long as possible.
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The government will start testing people applying for disability benefits to see if they are really in too much pain to work.
You will be able to buy headphones that also measure your pain levels and automatically dose you with Ibuprofen. Your boss will require them, and only when they are unable to dampen the pain can you take a sick day.
Now doctors can't turn people away, as easily (Score:3, Interesting)
One bonus, if this becomes a thing, is we can actually get doctors to have to acknowledge when people are in pain.
With current drug laws in much of the world, especially for those in the United States, doctors tend to deny anyone who says they are in pain, and give alternative treatments that do nothing to actually affect pain.
Now we can prove that no, this person is not a junkie, and is in pain.
And maybe we'll finally get proper acknowledgement of period cramps, instead of getting idiots saying it's all in your head.
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No real woman needs a pill for her period.
First off, do you even understand endometriosis? It's essentially metastatic uterine lining growing all over your abdomen. During that time of the month, it's the actual uterine tissue generating the hormones causing the contractions. Because of the excess tissue, there are also excess hormone levels. Closer to or exceeding actual childbirth. If you don't think that pain medication should be allowed for childbirth in 2023 I don't know what to tell you. The stretching and tearing are not the major pain
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One bonus, if this becomes a thing, is we can actually get doctors to have to acknowledge when people are in pain.
Indeed. As someone dealing with chronic pain I was left wondering why physicians kept trying to shove antidepressants down my throat. They did nothing for my pain and left me with some very unpleasant side effects. I found out with some research that supposedly antidepressants help relieve "nerve pain". Well, I keep telling the physicians that they don't help, and that I want the medications I had before, the kinds of drugs approved by the FDA for pain. I was told I would not get those medications. Wh
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I think you should blame the people who got rich suing opioid producers and extracting $21 billion from them. In the US the public largely gets what it wants, although people don't feel like it because so many want to have their cake and eat it too.
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I think you should blame the people who got rich suing opioid producers and extracting $21 billion from them.
I think you should blame the executives of the producers, which deliberately underreported and downplayed risks of their medications. They made the decision to lie about their product.
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That's how it's worked with back injuries. Not all injuries show on an MRI, and if your MRI didn't have the magic phrase 'recommend clinical correlation', no painkillers, byebye.
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The problem is that pain has no colour. Pain from drug dependence, lack or withdrawal is indistinguishable from other chronic pain sources.
Pain is a message from the body to the brain, that something is wrong.
It can be damage, damage can be observed. ...
It can be functional (dysfunctional actually), some is observable, some much less. In case of drug addiction the dysfunction alone is a symptom, not the cause.
Pain is a very complex matter. Perception is different across individuals. Some persons are more re
Wide implications. (Score:3, Interesting)
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I always thought the 10 was the give away indicator. If you can verbalize a 10 you aren’t experiencing a 10.
You're probably right. Your comment reminds me of a study I saw once where they were trying to detect people who were under-reporting depression in post-partum women. What they found was that if the women scored a zero on screening tools for depression-- that they reported *no* depressive symptoms whatsoever-- this was a strong predictor that they were actually pretty depressed. (How did they determine that they were "actually pretty depressed"? I don't remember, but there was some outcome measure that
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Most people have never had enough experience with severe pain to accurately self-report. I would certainly overrate any sort of severe pain because I don't have much to compare with.
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I get so frustrated with the questions on giving a number for pain level that I'll often refuse to answer. They write the number down and then do nothing about it. I should bring a 10-sided die and roll it in front of them to pick a number as an attempt to illustrate what I believe the utility in their number scheme appears to be.
My pain cannot be reduced to a number. If it were that simple then perhaps the treatment would also be that simple. I give a number then the nurse pulls a pill bottle with the
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In my state, having any scheduled drugs outside of the pharmacy container at all (unless it's in your body or on its way in) is technically illegal. The act of moving the pills to a daily dosing organizer is a felony. Imagine how well it would work for ADHD if actually following the law.
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It appears from drug policy in the USA that the government prefers people dead than high.
Very much so.
They will put so much Tylenol with codeine, the stuff my dentist prescribed after a root canal, that someone would die of liver damage from the Tylenol before they'd get high from the codeine.
You know what the funny part is? The whole "adding acetaminophen" tragedy came from *one* idiot, and is based on literally *nothing* except his own imagination. No testing, no studies run, nothing: just utter bullshit pulled out of thin air, and discredited over and over again for decades since. Norco/Vicodin still does it to this day though, and it's impossible to get hydrocodone in any form without at least 30x as much liver-destroying poison added to the pills as there is actual medicine.
I guess the Tylenol content was dialed back a few years ago, because that was making the Tylenol brand look bad from the overdoses.
Yep
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This could impact a lot of ethical issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Being able to see how the brain is processing stimuli as painful or not has the potential to strongly alter society's take on methods of execution/euthanasia, including for animals, and late term abortion. All those scenarios where you asserted something was done humanely but couldn't actually ask the subject about the experience after the fact.
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Speaking of humane, a lot of people are denied pain medication because it's assumed they're faking it to get drugs...
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If people cared about humane execution, they would all be done with pure nitrogen. I feel like the people fighting to keep lethal injection know that a chemically paralyzed person is suffering horribly but shows no outward signs.
Use on animals (Score:3)
I think an evolution of this tech would be fantastic for pet owners and vets. It can be hard to tell when animals are in pain.
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They only did it on 4 people in that study .. once more people try it they'll probably get a better understanding and ascertain those and maybe also figure out how to dampen the waves (like noise cancellation).
What a time to live in (Score:3)
I can't give you anything for your pain because anything that works is Schedule 1 now, but I can tell you just exactly how much pain you're in on a calibrated scale.
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I can't give you anything for your pain because anything that works is Schedule 1 now, but I can tell you just exactly how much pain you're in on a calibrated scale.
That reminds me of one time going to see someone about a really bad flu/cold/whatever and being told to pick up something at the drug store. I don't remember the exact name, only that it had varieties that ended with different letters. I was looking for the "D" (or whatever) variety, but all I could find was "DM", "V", "R", and "T" (just picking letters at random). I guessed that the "D" and "DM" must be somehow related, or the provider was somehow mistaken on the name. I bought it, went home, and took
Re:What a time to live in (Score:4, Interesting)
Why?
Well, it's technically an opioid. But it doesn't cross the blood-brain-barrier, so doesn't get you high. Normally. If you take an obnoxious quantity, like 50-100 2mg pills,and have no tolerance, you can overwhelm the mechanism that keeps it out. Virtually nobody does this. What people *do* use it for, if you take 20-60 pills, it will stop opioid withdrawal. Not just the diarrhea, all of it.
You'd think the government would be happy about a cheap way to stop opioid withdrawal that isn't typically abused, but nope. They have to assert their control, get their fucking cut, and lock it down. The excuse? A very, very small number of people have both tolerance and try to get high from it... if you take 300+ pills at once, or 200-400 pills per day for weeks-months, there's a small risk of death from prolonged QT heart failure. So small the number of documented deaths, ever, can be counted on your fingers. And again, only in people who are taking *hundreds* of pills at once. Not an accident.
But the FDA/DEA claims it's just so risky they have to heavily lock it down... so get ready. They've already banned bottles; notice how you can only get small quantities in blister packs now, when a few years ago you could get bottles by hundreds?
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So fucking what?
Seriously, so fucking what? If people want to get high, let them get high. But people who need medication still can get it, that's worth more than some dopeheads not getting high.
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I'd be pro-legalizing drugs if the users didn't require taxpayer-funded rehabilitation again and again.
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But I doubt this is news to you. People who make arguments like yours aren't looking to save taxpaye
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This would be a fantastic breakthrough (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now, we have no way to calibrate how much pain someone is in, except to show them cartoon faces and to ask them for an answer on a scale of 1 to 10.
If we could see how much pain someone is really in with a test, it would help us give the right pain medications to the right patients - avoiding much opioid abuse and avoiding leaving people in pain.
If we could see how much pain someone is really in with a test, it would help the courts stop scammers who sue over minor traffic accidents and help the courts give appropriate awards to those who are really in pain.
If we could see how much pain someone is really in with a test, it would help us decide who needs disability and who needs to get back to work.
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Right now, we have no way to calibrate how much pain someone is in, except to show them cartoon faces and to ask them for an answer on a scale of 1 to 10.
Yes we do: it's called the McGill scale. VAS (which is what you're talking about) is a garbage system only really appropriate for simple injuries, not chronic pain.
> If we could see how much pain someone is really in with a test, it would
not make any difference at all. The frauds would still commit fraud, and the same corrupt doctors who falsified their "whiplash" cases would claim the pain is variable and they were just tested during a low point. The drug-seekers would likewise still lie about their pai
new excuse (Score:2)
A new excuse to deny opiates to people in pain. You're just plain SOL if you don't happen to be one of the ones with the right brain waves.