A team of experts led by Twin Cities of the University of Minnesota found that sound and electrical stimulation of the body combined activate the somatosensory or “tactile” cortex of the brain, increasing the potential for using the technique to treat chronic pain and other sensory disturbances. Researchers have tested the non-invasive technique on animals and are planning clinical trials in humans in the near future.
The results of the Research have been published in the scientific journal Journal of Neural Engineering
Sound and electrical stimulation for the treatment of chronic pain: this is what it consists of
In carrying out the experiments, the research team reproduced the broadband sound as they electrically stimulated different parts of the body in the guinea pigs. The researchers found that the combination of the two neurons activated in the somatosensory cortex of the brain which is responsible for the tactile and painful sensations throughout the body, activated by sound and electrical stimulation in combination, it has produced interesting results.
While the researchers used needle stimulation in their experiments, similar results could be obtained using electronic stimulation devices, such as transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TENS), which are widely available to anyone shopping in drugstores and stores. The researchers hope their findings will lead to safer and more accessible chronic pain treatment than pharmacological approaches.
“Chronic pain is a big problem for many people and, for the most part, it is not curable enough,” he said. Cory Gloeckner, lead author of the study, a 2017 Ph.D. and researcher of the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and assistant professor at John Carroll University.
“Right now, one of the ways we try to treat pain is with opioids and we all know it doesn’t work well for a lot of people. This, on the other hand, is a simple and non-invasive application. It is not an expensive medical device that you have to buy to treat your pain. It’s something we think would be available to just about anyone due to its low cost and simplicity, ”added Cory Gloeckner, describing one of the many benefits of the combination of sound and electrical stimulation.
The researchers intend to continue studying this “multimodal” approach to treating various neurological conditions, potentially integrating music therapy in the future to see how they can further modify the somatosensory cortex.
“Many people have used acupuncture or electrical stimulation, either non-invasive or invasive, to try to alter brain activity for pain,” he said. Hubert Limsenior author of the study and Professor at the Twin Cities Department of the University of Minnesota. Biomedical Engineering and Department of Otolaryngology: “Our research shows that when you combine this with sound, the brain lights up even more.”
Lim said this opens up a whole new field in using this bimodal and multimodal stimulation for the treatment of diseases: “It’s strange to think of using sound and electrical stimulation to treat pain, but if you think about what institutes are doing like the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing or the NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, are looking at music therapy and combining other modalities with traditional methods to be able to improve the healing of these types of conditions ” Lim added: “This research gives us a new structured framework to get it going.”
Chronic pain can relate to one part of the body such as chronic back pain or low back pain or involve different parts of the body. These are pathologies with which we must learn to live with, such as fibromyalgia which some doctors believe to be a psychic problem and not of an organic nature. The best thing in these cases is to contact a good rheumatologist trained on the subject who will prescribe all the necessary analyzes for a complete diagnostic investigation and who leaves nothing to chance.
#Sound #electrical #stimulation #treat #chronic #pain