Study finds that sound plus electrical body stimulation has potential to treat chronic pain
August 11, 2022 — A University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team — including Department of Biomedical Engineering Professor Hubert Lim — has found that electrical stimulation of the body combined with sound activates the brain’s somatosensory or “tactile” cortex, increasing the potential for using the technique to treat chronic pain and other sensory disorders. The researchers tested the non-invasive technique on animals and are planning clinical trials on humans in the near future.
The paper is published in the Journal of Neural Engineering, a highly regarded, peer-reviewed scientific journal for the interdisciplinary field of neural engineering.
“A lot of people have been using acupuncture or electrical stimulation — non-invasive or invasive — to try to alter brain activity for pain,” said Hubert Lim, senior author on the paper and a professor in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Otolaryngology. “Our research shows that when you combine this with sound, the brain lights up even more.”