According to a Chinese study, feeling nostalgia when looking at images related to one’s childhood can relieve mild, low-intensity pain. How?’ Or ‘What? Thanks to the thalamus, an area of the human brain capable of responding to both nostalgia and pain information.
What if the best painkiller lies dormant in us? According to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, nostalgia could reduce pain or everyday ailments. To prove this, researchers at Peking University measured the brain activity of 34 adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging, also known as fMRI. The volunteers were divided into two groups.
In the first, people looked at images that evoked a sense of nostalgia, such as children’s games or cartoon characters. In the second, the participants looked at modern images of earlier images, which did not evoke nostalgia. After each image, people were exposed to a heat pulse of varying intensity on the right forearm.
According to the results of this experiment, nostalgia would cause real effects on the brain by activating pain-relieving mechanisms, such as an analgesic effect. This phenomenon is said to emphasize the essential role of the thalamus, a brain region.
“Our study revealed that the thalamus plays a key role as a functional link between desire and pain, suggesting a possible modulatory analgesic mechanism of desire.”
So, to your souvenir photos!
(ETX Daily Up)