Throbbing pain isn’t a matter of the heart, UF researchers find » News » University of Florida

Throbbing pain may pound like a heartbeat, but University of Florida scientists have discovered the sensation is all in your head, or more precisely, in your brain waves.The finding could drastically change how researchers look for therapies that can ease pain, said Dr. Andrew Ahn, a neurologist at the UF College of Medicine, a part of UF Health. Ahn and his colleagues reported their findings in the July issue of the journal Pain."Aristotle linked throbbing pain to heart rhythm 2,300 years ago," Ahn said. "It took two millennia to discover that his presumption was wrong."People who have experienced a toothache or a migraine — or even just hit their shin on the coffee table — may have noted a throbbing quality to the pain that physicians have long associated with arterial pulsations at the location of the injury. Some medicines even constricted blood vessel walls in hopes of lessening the effect."Current therapies for pain do not adequately relieve pain and have serious negative side effects, so we thought that by examining this experience more closely we could find clues that would lead us to improved therapies to help people who suffer from pain," Ahn said. "It turns out that we have been looking in the wrong place all along."Ahn and his colleagues had previously examined the pulsations associated with throbbing pain while monitoring heart rate and found the two were not linked. This observation can be verified by almost anyone experiencing throbbing pain, by c...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs