The Research Team and Collaboration of the University of Science and Technology revealed the cause of the pain to reduce the pain

"Music therapy" has an important scientific basis. Recently, the team of Professor Zhang Zhi, the Ministry of Life Science and Medicine of the University of Science and Technology of China, and Associate Professor Tao Wenjuan team and collaborator of Anhui Medical University through experiments, revealing the key factors and neural mechanisms of sound analgesics.

As early as 1960, Science magazine published a paper, saying that music can regulate patient emotions during dental surgery, and pointed out that even noise, such as the sound of surgical electric drills, can also produce analgesic effects. In life, music is often used as auxiliary means to play a positive role in reducing the pain of patients.

But why does listening to music reduce pain? Is it because of dispersing attention or other reasons? For more than half a century, the key factors of sound analgesic, as well as how the sound affects our brain and reduce the pain of pain, is unclear.

In this study, the researchers first played three different types of sounds to the claws, which were soothing music, inconsistent notes and white noise. It was found that when these three sounds were played at low intensity (about the level of whispering), they could effectively relieve the pain of mice, and there was no obvious analgesic effect when high -intensity playback.

In view of the analgesic effect of the sound prompting sound is closely related to the treatment environment, the researchers put the mice in an environment of different intensity background sounds, and found that the sound of about 5 points higher than the environmental noise can effectively alleviate the mouse's mice's sound. pain. At this point, researchers have established a mouse model with sound analgesics.

"Surprisingly, for mice, the weak sound between sound and environmental noise is very important for the analgesic effect of sound, not the melody of the sound." The first author of the paper, Chinese science science Dr. Zhou Wenjie, a special associate researcher at the Department of Life Science and Medicine of the University of Technology, said.

So, what is the neural mechanism of the analgesic effect?

The leather layer is the highest -level center of sound treatment, which can be widely projected into the whole brain range, and participate in regulating fear, learning memory, etc. Therefore, the researchers use the virus as a nerve tracer to track the whole brain of the leather listening of the leather layer. Studies have found that the glutamic acid neurons in the cortex are mainly projected into the body sensation that is closely related to pain processing (the body sensation is responsible for receiving the sensory signal from the body, including pain). At the same time, it is found that low -intensity sounds can inhibit this. projection.

"The research results show that low -intensity sounds can relieve the pain of the pain by inhibiting the nerve projection of the leather layer to the body, and then to relieve the pain." Zhou Wenjie said that this is the leather hill brain circuit of sound analgesic. However, there are many unsolved mysteries between sound and pain. For example, in addition to the sound strength, the melody of sound, the role of pain in human perception, etc., also needs further research.

(He reports all media reporter Liu Chang Sichen)

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