Earlier this month The Green Man reported on pain perception and how it is altered by the gender of the person administering the pain. Casting more light on this curious phenonemon is a recent article in Science that investigates the placebo effect with respect to pain.

Subjects were told that a cream they were given to apply dulled pain in the skin. They were then given painful but harmless electric shocks. Comparing their brain activity with that of people who had not been given the "anti-pain" cream showed a shift in brain activity away from well-known pain-sensing regions, such as the thalamus, the somatosensory cortex and parts of the cerebral cortex, to an area known as the prefrontal cortex.

Given that the cream did nothing the shift of brain activity was unconsiously orchestrated by the person themselves. This research highlights that, just as the brain controls activities in other parts of the body, so it can control its own activity. This is a big step that has been taken in providing understanding and scientific legitimacy to certain eastern meditative therapeutic practices which appear to work but for which science had no explanation.

Read more here.