Migralex Blog

Do pain words hurt?

A fascinating study entitled “Do words hurt? Brain activation during the processing of pain-related words” is published in the February issue of journal Pain. German researchers used functional MRI scanning to see how pain-related, negative, positive, and neutral words are processed in the brain.

They found that pain-related words were processed in brain regions that process actual pain experiences. The editorial that accompanied the article suggests that it is premature to say that the brain’s response to pain words indicates an actual pain experience. However, similar research in anxiety suggests that the brain is constantly scanning the environment for anxiety-related words and symbols, which reinforces and worsens anxiety. It is likely that a similar process happens in chronic pain patients.

This may seem like an obvious finding, but its great importance is in the fact that it lends strong scientific support to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) of chronic pain, including chronic headaches. CBT has already been shown to be more effective than drugs in the treatment of depression. It is also recognized as an effective adjunctive treatment for chronic pain and headaches, but it is used far less often than drugs. A disproportionally large amount of research money is devoted to pharmaceuticals, but it appears that words can be stronger than drugs. Hopefully, studies like this one will lead to a shift of research funding to psychological and other non-pharmacological treatments.

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