A person can feel a lot of different things with nostalgia. There is a unique form of pain relief that can be found amidst the memories.
The observation has been going on for a long time. Nostalgia has been shown to diminish the perception of pain.
There is a mystery as to where the effects of nostalgia originate in the brain.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences tried to solve the puzzle in an experiment.
The researchers used fMRI to monitor the brain activity of 34 volunteers and presented them with images designed to induce nostalgic feelings.
The non-nostalgic images were shown to the group as control images, showing objects and scenes from modern life, but not recalling childhood memories.
The volunteers were shown the images and then subjected to a thermosensory device that gave them a sensation of heat on their forearm.
The team expected that the nostalgia-themed images would bring some measure of pain relief to the participants, with the volunteers rating the painfulness of the heat stimulator device lower when they were looking at the nostalgic pictures.
The effect was most apparent when the heat device was at its lowest level of pain. When the thermal stimulator was set to its highest pain level in the experiment, nostalgia seemed to lose its power.
The team suggests that nostalgia lasts longer when pain is low, or that severe pain occupies more cognitive resources, diminishing the effects of nostalgia.
When participants ratings of the pictures were taken into account, the most nostalgic images were linked with a better effect.
The team writes in its paper that the more nostalgic the participants felt, the less pain they perceived.
According to the fMRI data, nostalgic images triggered higher levels of brain activity in the occipital cortex, supramarginal gyrus, and the frontal orbital cortex.
The researchers note that when nostalgia images were shown at the same time as the pain stimuli, activity levels in other parts of the brain changed.
The brain activity of the left lingual gyrus and parahippocampal decreased in the nostalgia condition.
The team says that the thalamocortical system plays a vital role in how analgesia works in the brain.
The researchers explain that the thalamus is an important brain region for information transmission.
The researchers suggest that nostalgia might reduce pain by increasing the activity of the thalamus.
The researchers propose a model of thalamus-centered pathways to explain the effects of nostalgia.
The findings offer implications and perspectives for the further development and improvement of non-drug, psychological analgesia.
The findings are reported in a journal.
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