How pain distorts our senses
In the study, if a hand was held near the painful area of the back, the brain would almost 'neglect' that hand. Image: melodija/iStockphoto Einstein’s famous theory of relativity proposed that matter can distort space and time. Now a new study recently published in the journal Neurology suggests that chronic pain can have the same effect. Neuroscientists from the University of South Australia, Neuroscience Research Australia and the University of Milano Bicocca in Italy, studied people with chronic back pain, the most common painful condition which costs western countries billions of dollars in lost productivity every year. They presented identical vibration stimuli to the painful area and a non-painful area and noted that the stimuli were processed more slowly by the brain if they came from the painful area. The most striking finding, however, was that the same effect occurred if the stimuli were delivered to a healthy body part being held near the painful...