Chinese scientist science post: The cause of the deciphering sound reduces the cause of pain

Author:Scientific network Time:2022.07.10

Text | "China Science News" reporter Wang Min

On July 8th, Beijing time, Zhang Zhi, a professor of the Ministry of Life Science and Medicine of the University of Science and Technology of China, Liu Yuanyuan, a professor of the National Institute of Health, and Tao Wenjuan, an associate professor of Anhui Medical University, published a paper in Science, revealing the sound analgesic Key factors and neural mechanisms.

Low -intensity sounds The schematic diagram of the pain of mice to relieve the pain of mice by inhibiting the nervous projection of the hypothalamus in the body

In fact, as early as 1960, the "Science" magazine published a paper and found that music can regulate patient emotions during dental surgery. It is also pointed out that even noise, such as the sound of surgical electric drills, can also produce analgesic effects.

However, for more than half a century, sounds can reduce the key factors of pain, as well as how sound affects our brain and reduce the pain of pain. It 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.

Some research hypothesis believes that the analgesic effect of sound may be closely related to the treatment environment. Therefore, the researchers put mice in an environment with different strength background sounds and found that the sound of about 5 dB higher than the environmental noise can effectively relieve the pain of mice. 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 Zhou Wenjie, a special associate researcher at the Department of Life Science and Medicine of the University of Technology.

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

The leather layer is the highest -level brain center of sound treatment, and the sound of the sound is detailed. The researchers used the virus as a neurotic trace agent to track the leather hearing layer output, and found that a large number of neurons in the hearing cortex were projected into the body sensation (responsible for receiving the sensory signal from the body, including pain), and found that it was found 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, in addition to sound strength, the melody of sound also needs further research on the role of human perception of pain.

In response to this study, the "Science" magazine made a special review, stating that "the model of the foundation of a research mechanism has opened up a new direction for the research of analgesic for music/sound."