Treating mild pain with a dose of nostalgia

Nostalgia, as can be evoked by looking at photographs of your childhood and youth, could help reduce feelings of mild pain. — AFP

Could the best painkiller actually be found inside us?

According to a Chinese study, experiencing the feeling of nostalgia while looking at images related to one’s childhood could help relieve mild pain.

The effect has its roots in the thalamus – an area of the human brain capable of reacting to both nostalgia and pain-related information.

To prove this, researchers from Beijing’s Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences measured the brain activity of 34 adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The volunteers were divided into two groups.

Participants in the first group viewed images that evoked feelings of nostalgia, such as children’s games or cartoon characters.

Those in the second group viewed modern representations of the previous images, which did not evoke nostalgic feelings.

After each image, each volunteer was exposed to a heat-pain stimulation of varying intensity on the right forearm.

According to the results of this experiment, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, nostalgia triggers real effects in the brain by activating pain relief mechanisms, such as an analgesic effect.

This phenomenon highlights the essential role of the thalamus.

“The thalamus plays a key role as a central functional linkage in the analgesic effect,” said first author Dr Zhang Ming. – AFP Relaxnews