Duke Finds a Pain "Off" Switch in the Amygdala of Mice

[BruceMC]

https://today.duke.edu/2020/05/neurobiologist-finds-potent-pain-suppression-center-brain (Neurobiologist Finds Potent Pain-Suppression Center in the Brain)

Interesting how the key to turning off pain resides in the same location in the brain where fight-flight-freeze response is also generated. Like they're interrelated.

Found this study cited in the same Pain PT YouTube video that describes the role of fear in perpetuating chronic pain:

This article is also cited in the same YouTube video:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796720300863 (Fear in the context of pain: Lessons learned from 100 years of fear conditioning research - ScienceDirect)

 

[Cap'n Spanky]

Really interesting stuff! "It’s also located in an area where few people would have thought to look for an anti-pain center, the amygdala, which is often considered the home of negative emotions and responses, like the fight or flight response and general anxiety."

 

[BruceMC]

Suggests to me that chronic pain patients were children that had extremely frightening and traumatic ACEs (adverse childhood events) during brain development before their 6th birthdays when the fright-flight-freeze mammalian survival response got triggered and frozen in their amygdala (two). I'd guess a subsequent traumatic event during their lives activated that same response again, producing chronic pain symptoms. Of course, I'm not a neuroscientist by any means and this is just my educated guess work. I'd think Jim at the Pain PT site would have more to say about this.