Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

Pain

A wandering brain reduces pain?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 14, page 819 (2013)Cite this article

Subjects

Although pain is a highly salient stimulus, the experience of pain varies from moment to moment and among individuals. Specific cognitive strategies can reduce pain experience, but the authors focused on spontaneously occurring pain reductions by investigating whether they could be linked to DMN activity — for example, through connections between DMN areas and pain-modulation areas.

Volunteers received painful stimuli while fixating on a cross on a screen in a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner. After each stimulus they indicated the extent to which their thoughts and feelings had been focused on the pain or on something else, and whether that 'something else' was an external distraction (such as a sound), a task-related thought (such as what answer to give) or nothing in particular (that is, mind-wandering).

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Kucyi, A., Salomons, T. V. & Davis, K. D. Mind wandering away from pain dynamically engages antinociceptive and default mode brain networks. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1312902110 (2013)

Download references

Authors
  1. Leonie Welberg
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Related links

Related links

Related links in Nature Research

Bushnell, M. C., Čeko, M. & Low, L. A. Cognitive and emotional control of pain and its disruption in chronic pain. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 14, 502–511 (2013)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Welberg, L. A wandering brain reduces pain?. Nat Rev Neurosci 14, 819 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3639

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3639

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing