Dental Health and Medical Care

Our brain is not able to track which specific tooth pain comes when you have a toothache. To a study published by the journal Pain. German researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg coordinated by Clemens Forster analyzed through sophisticated imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of brain activity while volunteers were suffering from toothache. It has jumped eyes that the brain does not seem able to distinguish with precision the origin of pain.

“For example we expected a marked difference depending on whether the pain cover the upper teeth or lower, but it was not so,” says Forster. There are many brain regions that respond to tooth pain, so that is transmitted through two distinct pathways in the trigeminal nerve but also activates the same areas: the cerebral cortex, the insular cortex and cingulate cortex. “Activation is more or less the same, or at least we are not able to measure subtle differences.” Since the brain areas activated by toothaches are the same regardless of place of origin of pain, the patient may not be able to pinpoint the source of pain: “Dentists should take account of this imprecision, which physiological and psychological roots, “says Forster.