A research team from the University of Michigan used electricity on certain regions in the brain of a patient with chronic, severe facial pain to release an opiate-like substance that’s considered one of the body’s most powerful painkillers. The findings, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, expanded on a previous study with Harvard University and the City University of New York, in which scientists delivered electricity through sensors on the skulls of chronic migraine patients. They found a decrease in the intensity and pain of their headache attacks. The researchers were unable to completely explain how or why at that point in time.
