study
Natural remedy: Why indulging in nostalgia can help against pain
Wallowing in beautiful memories – for some it’s sentimental nonsense, for others it’s a natural painkiller.
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When things get rough in life, it helps to look back on better days. Indulging in beautiful memories can improve your mood – and, according to a new study, even relieve pain.
Everything was better before? Certainly not. The longing for the past is often little more than a memory embellished by the memory, which in reality was not experienced half as beautifully as it is relived. And yet nostalgia manages to trigger a pleasant feeling of contentment, even happiness. And not only that. A team of researchers has now discovered that nostalgia also works against Pain works.
The pain perception of 34 participants was examined in the small cooperative study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Liaoning Normal University. To do this, they were exposed to heat stimuli. At the same time, the participants looked at neutral pictures, but also those that reminded them of their childhood. Including those from old cartoon series or certain sweets. The test subjects then rated the intensity of the perceived pain themselves using a scale, and MRI scans of the brain were also taken. It turned out that images that triggered nostalgic feelings in the participants acted like a natural painkiller. The results have now been published in the scientific journal “JNeurosci”.
The nostalgia triggers are everywhere
Little is known about the biological processes behind the nostalgia effect. The MRI scans have now shed some more light into the darkness of this research field. “The thalamus plays a crucial role in this process of nostalgia-induced pain relief,” explained one of the study authors, Joe Yazhuo Kong, to CNN. The thalamus therefore takes on the function of a link between nostalgia and pain. It was observed that looking at the corresponding images caused less activity in the areas of the brain that are linked to the feeling of pain. The pain reaction was also more controlled.
The positive effects of nostalgia are not new. Other studies found, among other things, that nostalgic thoughts alone increase pain tolerance. In chronically ill patients, pain could be reduced by writing tasks linked to nostalgia. There are many nostalgia triggers. In addition to images, music and films, taste and smell experiences can also trigger involuntary memories. Marcel Proust, for example, described this in his novel of the century “In Search of Lost Time”. In it, it is the Madeleine pastries that mentally transport the main character back in time.
So nostalgia can help relieve pain. But she doesn’t have to. Since it is a subjective sensation, its effects vary from person to person. While some people often wallow in sentimental memories and can get completely absorbed in them, this feeling is almost foreign to others. “Nostalgia is a feeling of connection with other people,” quotes “CNN” Julie Swets, who also studies nostalgia at Texas Christian University. “People who tend to avoid intimacy with other people or who prefer distance rather than close relationships do not benefit from nostalgia to the same extent.”