Doctor's Orders

A recent study has shown that concentrating on certain tasks can affect the perception of pain. In the study, lucky volunteers were required to complete either a hard or easy letter memory task while painful levels of heat were applied to their arms.

For those distracted by the more challenging tasks, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans revealed that pain signals – from the spinal cord to the upper regions of the brain – were actively pushed away.

'The results demonstrate that this phenomenon is not just a psychological phenomenon, but an active neuronal mechanism,' said study leader, Dr Christian Sprenger from the University Medical Centre, Hamburg-Eppendorf, in Germany.

That being the case, it seems to us that Killer Sudoku ought to be available on prescription!