RESEARCH - In pain? Take one masterpiece, three times a day

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From New Scientist Print Edition

18 September 2008

In pain? Take one masterpiece, three times a day

THE power of art to heal emotional wounds is well known, but could

contemplating a beautiful painting have the same effect on physical

pain?

To investigate, Marina de Tommaso and a team from the University of

Bari in Italy asked 12 men and women to pick the 20 paintings they

considered most ugly and most beautiful from a selection of 300 works

by artists such as da Vinci and Botticelli.

They were then asked to contemplate either the beautiful paintings, or

the ugly painting, or a blank panel while the team zapped a short

laser pulse at their hand, creating a pricking sensation.

The subjects rated the pain as being a third less intense while they

were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with contemplating the

ugly paintings or the blank panel. Electrodes measuring the brain's

electrical activity suggested a reduced response to the pain when the

subject looked at beautiful paintings (Consciousness and Cognition,

DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.07.002).

While distractions are known to reduce pain in hospital patients, de

Tommaso says this is the first result to show that beauty plays a

part. " Hospitals have been designed to be functional, but we think

that their aesthetic aspects should be taken into account too, " she

says.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19926744.900-in-pain-take-one-maste\

rpiece-three-times-a-day.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

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Not an MD