Why Rubbing Your Temples Can Make a Sore Head Feel Better
Rubbing an aching body part can bring some relief. Neuroscientists believe they may have discovered why.
When people instinctively begin rubbing their temples to ease a headache or cradle an elbow after bumping it, they engage in a deeply rooted biological behavior. This simple act of touch-based self-soothing reflects a powerful neural mechanism through which the body modulates pain. While the phenomenon is familiar, its underlying biology has long puzzled scientists. How exactly does touch alleviate pain signals within the brain?
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) McGovern Institute for Brain Research have provided key insights into this question. By studying how mice use whisker movement to dampen facial pain, they revealed that tactile input can alter the activity of neurons in brain regions where pain is processed. The findings shed light on how the brain integrates touch and pain – an interaction that may help explain why rubbing temples or other affected areas provides relief.
Understanding the science of touch and pain
Pain signaling and nociception
Pain perception begins with specialized sensory neurons called nociceptors, which respond to potentially damaging stimuli such as heat, pressure or injury. These neurons transmit signals through the spinal cord to the brain, where they are interpreted as pain. The brain regions most closely involved in processing these inputs include the thalamus and the somatosensory cortex.
Touch, on the other hand, activates mechanoreceptors – sensory neurons that respond to physical contact and vibration. Under normal conditions, pain and touch signals follow distinct neural pathways. However, these systems are capable of interacting, and this cross-talk can suppress or modify pain signals. This is the neurobiological basis of the pain-relieving effect that occurs when someone rubs a sore area.
Main sensory receptor types include:
- Nociceptors: Respond to damaging or potentially damaging stimuli (pain)
- Mechanoreceptors: Detect pressure, vibration, and texture (touch)
- Thermoreceptors: Sense changes in temperature
- Proprioceptors: Provide information about body position and movement
The somatosensory cortex and thalamic pathways
The somatosensory cortex is responsible for integrating touch, pressure and pain information from across the body. Signals from the thalamus – a relay center in the brain – arrive here for interpretation. When touch and pain stimuli are received simultaneously, neurons in these regions must integrate the information and determine the overall sensory response. Understanding how these neural networks balance conflicting signals is essential for deciphering the physiological mechanism of touch-induced analgesia.
Credit: iStock.
Modeling pain relief in the laboratory
To explore the interaction between touch and pain, the MIT research team turned to mice – a model organism with well-characterized sensory systems. Mice naturally use rhythmic whisker movements, known as whisking, to explore their surroundings. This motion produces gentle vibrations that activate tactile receptors in the face, offering a convenient and controllable model for studying touch-mediated neural processes.
The team observed that when mice experienced an unpleasant facial stimulus, such as heat or a light poke, they often responded by rubbing their faces – a behavioral parallel to humans rubbing temples or a sore muscle. However, studying brain activity during these movements is challenging. Voluntary motion generates a surge of neural signals that can obscure pain-related activity, making it difficult to determine which responses are truly related to pain modulation.
To overcome this obstacle, the researchers recorded neural activity in the somatosensory cortex while the mice engaged in self-generated whisking. By focusing on the subtle vibrations of whisker movement, they could isolate the brain’s response to tactile input without the confounding effects of large body movements.
Advanced computational tools were developed to distinguish neural signals associated with touch, movement and pain. These algorithms allowed the team to map how specific populations of neurons changed their firing patterns in response to both noxious and tactile stimuli. This approach enabled a precise, high-resolution analysis of pain modulation within the brain’s sensory circuits.
What the MIT study revealed
When the mice’s whiskers were moving, their behavioral responses to painful stimuli were markedly reduced. The animals displayed less face rubbing and, in some cases, ignored the unpleasant stimuli entirely. Neurons that normally respond strongly to heat or mechanical poking were significantly less active during whisking, indicating that touch signals were dampening pain-responsive pathways.
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In addition to reduced neural activation, the researchers found that whisking altered the timing and dynamics of pain-related brain activity. Even when mice eventually rubbed their faces, the neural patterns leading to that motion developed more slowly, suggesting that tactile input delayed or disrupted the typical pain response sequence.
This phenomenon was traced to specific neural pathways linking the ventral posterior thalamus – a brain region responsible for relaying touch information – to the somatosensory cortex. When the team experimentally blocked this thalamic pathway, whisking no longer reduced pain responses. This finding confirmed that touch-mediated pain relief depends on dedicated neural circuits that integrate tactile information into pain processing networks.
Decoding the touch–pain interaction
Neural integration and signal modulation
The interaction between touch and pain can be conceptualized as a competition within the nervous system. When tactile signals reach the brain, they can inhibit or override concurrent pain signals, reducing the overall perception of discomfort. This modulation occurs through complex neuronal feedback loops that involve both excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission.
In the MIT study, the suppression of pain-related neuronal firing during whisking suggests that tactile inputs recruit inhibitory interneurons or modify thalamocortical signaling in ways that decrease pain transmission efficiency. These findings align with earlier spinal cord research showing that non-painful touch can gate pain signals – a principle known as the gate control theory of pain.
The role of the ventral posterior thalamus
The ventral posterior thalamus serves as a sensory hub, relaying both touch and pain information to the somatosensory cortex. The MIT team’s work highlights how this region contributes to the fine-tuning of pain perception. When touch-processing circuits are engaged, they can attenuate the relay of nociceptive signals, effectively closing the gate to pain before it reaches conscious awareness.
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This thalamic modulation offers a neuroanatomical explanation for why rubbing temples or applying gentle touch can soothe pain. It suggests that certain thalamocortical circuits act as biological filters, adjusting the brain’s pain sensitivity based on concurrent sensory inputs.
Implications for chronic pain research
The discovery of how tactile signals influence cortical pain responses has important implications for chronic pain management. Disorders such as thalamic pain syndrome – a condition that can develop after a stroke affecting the thalamus – involve abnormal sensory signaling that leads to persistent pain. Understanding how thalamic circuits regulate touch and pain integration could guide the development of new therapeutic strategies for these conditions.
Researchers are now exploring whether artificial stimulation of tactile pathways might help restore balance in disrupted pain networks. Techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, vibrotactile therapy and targeted neurofeedback could potentially harness the same mechanisms that underlie natural touch-induced analgesia.
Furthermore, the computational methods developed for this study provide powerful tools for decoding complex brain activity. These approaches can help neuroscientists separate overlapping signals related to motion, touch and pain, offering deeper insights into how sensory experiences are represented in the cortex.
How rubbing temples reflects the brain’s pain modulation system
The instinct to rub temples during a headache or touch an injured area reflects an ancient neural mechanism that links tactile input with pain modulation. Through careful experimentation in animal models, MIT researchers have demonstrated how the brain’s somatosensory and thalamic circuits integrate touch and pain, revealing the physiological roots of a universal human behavior.
For laboratory scientists and clinicians alike, these findings emphasize the intricate balance between sensory systems that shapes pain perception. As neuroscience continues to decode these interactions, the simple act of rubbing temples stands as a tangible reminder of the brain’s remarkable capacity to regulate its own sensations.
This article is a rework of a press release issued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Material has been edited for length and the content has been updated to provide additional context and details of related developments since the original press release was published on our website. This content includes text that has been created with the assistance of generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing. Technology Networks' AI policy can be found here.
