Comments on: Brain Scans Suggest a New, Objective Way to Measure Pain

By: Clark Animal Hospita

Clark Animal Hospita — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:43:00 +0000

Everybody’s ‘scale’ is calibrated differently. My 5 may be yours 9 and vice versa. Although ‘scaling’ of pain gives it a semblance of objectivity, but it is just that …”semblance’, and nothing more. Certainly not objective.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:48:40 +0000

Think what this could do for tort reform. Scam artists could no longer be able act their way into personal injury settlements. Sleazy PI lawyers would go out of business too. Sounds great!

By: Don

Don — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:08:16 +0000

As a past sufferer of pain for over seven years I can vouche that doctors do not believe you are in pain even when you are. When I visited neurosurgeons about my pain level they would not believe me because I was able to perform physical activities they could not perform. I stayed active even though the pain I suffered sometimes caused me to walk in circles for hours even though I was on massive pain killers and up to 10 T3′s a day. When I skied or used roller blades or rode my bike (standing ride only) the pain would go away for a while. When I finished I felt flush and out of pain for up to an hour and then the hammer would fall. Still the neurosurgeons did not believe me. One day I was injured again and despite the pain killers I was on and morphine and demarol I virtually started bending the frame of the stretcher I was on trying to relieve the pain. They finally believed me and operated on me a couple of months later. The pain disappeared immediately. I could walk around without pain immediately. I still go through minor bouts of chronic pain because of nerve damage but it is nothing like before.

If these neurosurgeons had access to a tool like this MRI perhaps my suffering could have been reduced by years…….

By: john

john — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:50:07 +0000

ouch !@#
how much did that hurt?
on a scale of 1 to 10 ?

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:18:16 +0000

Agreed Erica. I wouldn’t buy it yet. 40 people is probably too small of a sample size to induce anything. But I think (or I would hope) that blood flow in the brain has probably been explored and verified as a variable in brain activity on it’s own before use in this study. My concern would be in the variability of hot/cold free nerve endings in the epidermis. Do people with old “dishwater hands” just have a higher pain threshold or have they lowered the concentration of nerve endings as they have aged?

By: Erica

Erica — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 03:59:57 +0000

What happens when your brain’s bloodflow is just different than everyone elses, and it shows up on fMRI that you’re “not in pain” when in fact you are? Your doctor will have “proof” that you’re faking it now… even if you really are not. Until this is perfected, it seems like it would be pretty dangerous in the hands of busy medical professionals (speaking as an RN myself).

By: Renton

Renton — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:43:04 +0000

The future end of the process begun with this experiment will be a world in which whatever pain you suffer will be as easily known and confirmed as your height or weight. No more need for self-medication. No more large crowds at sleazy “pain clinics.” A much, much easier time for terminal cancer patients. A much, much easier time for GP’s whose patients parade through their consulting rooms complaining that it hurts, doctor. When pain is an objective measurement, the human world as it has been known from the beginning until now will be a very different, and better, place.

By: Iain

Iain — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 01:20:30 +0000

Masochists wanted. Sado’s need not apply.