First Objective Method of Measuring Pain Discovered

Using fMRI scans of the brain, US scientists have for the first time developed a method of "seeing" pain and suggest it may lead to reliable ways for doctors to quantify objectively how much pain patients are feeling. They also propose their study may open the route to using brain scans to measure anxiety, depression, and emotional states like anger.

www.medicalnewstoday.com...
www.colorado.edu...

Hopefully this will lead to more objective ways of diagnosing certain psychological conditions.

This could be very useful! Then prescribing methods could be addressed and possibly take care of the prescription drug abuse issues as well! ::up

reply to post by Cabin


Or if it landed in the hands of an enemy, be used against us as a weapon of torture? Just had to throw that one out there......

As much as I love science and medicine, I do have to wonder about ethics and what ways it can used against us....
Tin Foil Hat

Different people have different thresholds for pain.

I would be willing to bet a dollar, that you could take two people and subject them to the same pain causing action and read different levels of perceived pain in their brains.

Completely unrelated:
I was participating in a brain injury study a few years ago, I was getting an MRI on my brain and I was very irritated. So I was screaming curses in my mind and imagining the doctors heads exploding.

They told me to stop talking. I guess for some reason the scans were telling them that I was talking when I wasn't. I thought that was interesting.

reply to post by watchitburn


INDEED.

I think there's a thread on ATS about the capacity to pull pictures from dreaming subjects is being refined.

The oligarchy is advancing in it's full court press efforts to turn all individuals into tiny little cogs in their GREAT MACHINE.

May God have mercy on us all.

Well, it boils down to pain is subjective. You can't put a level on it from an external point of view.

If someone says they are in severe pain and pain killers are not helping, you can't plug them into a machine and say "Oh look, you're not in pain at all. stop being a sook."

It will lead to a world of problems for both patients and doctors. Or a world of pain, I should say.

Next they'll come up with a machine that can tell you the level of how much you like the taste of something.

One persons sweetness is another persons poison..

they apparently can already do this without what new hing they are playing with now.

i just had some tests done about the pain i have been suffering the last few years. as it was finishing up the doctor commented that i obviously had a high pain tolerance since i had been dealing with my issue for over the last years. in other words they might not have known an exact quantitative amount (like saying it is 35 degrees temperature). but they knew that there was a great deal of pain involved. this apparently from "listening" to certain muscles, and testing nerves.

I believe Billy Connoly discussed this very subject, i.e., pain thresholds...ah yes, he did...

www.youtube.com...

Watch the language for those easily offended or of sensitive nature.

This will help but then we can't measure someone's pain tolerance. It's all a matter of one's perspective/perception. The same exact headache with the same pain might not feel as bad in my head to me as it does to you in your head.


-Alien

its good bedside manner to actually believe the patient when they say they are in pain