It is possible to reduce and control pain with your mind. Researchers at Stanford University found that people could be trained to reduce their perception of pain using mental interventions coupled with visual feedback of the pain. That's good news for the millions of people who suffer from chronic pain. For most of us, pain management is a matter of taking a couple of aspirin. But those with chronic pain find that over the counter pain medications are often insufficient and the more powerful pain medicines have potentially serious side effects.
If you've ever had a lingering pain and just "wished" it would go away, perhaps you were close to a solution and didn't realize it.
At Stanford, pain feedback was provided by a new research tool called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An fMRI machine can provide real-time feedback by displaying a representation of the level of blood flow in the area of the brain that perceives pain.