The difficulty of Telling Which Tooth is Causing You Pain

People often have a hard time telling which tooth is causing them pain. The reason for this was revealed in a new imaging study of the brain. The results showed that while humans are good at distinguishing between a paper cut and a stubbed toe, narrowing down which tooth is causing them pain is more elusive.

Researchers used fMRI to monitor the brains of people who were subjected to electrical pulses to their teeth. Volunteers who had not tooth pain were randomly subjected to pain in upper and lower teeth and told to try and isolate the tooth that was being shocked. The painful shocks were alternated between the upper and lower teeth at random so the subjects did not know which tooth was being shocked except for the pain caused by the shocks. Interestingly, the brain scans showed no noticeable difference between pain on upper and lower teeth. The three regions they mapped; the somatosensory cortex, the insular cortex, and the cingulate cortex did not indicate a difference for top and bottom tooth pain. In line with these findings, the subjects themselves were not able to properly distinguish which tooth was being shocked. The study did not reveal why some tooth pain is localized. Certain tooth pain is felt in a specific tooth and patients are very good at pinpointing the source of the pain. The variation between localized pain and generalized pain is an area that requires more study in the future. Hopefully there will be some new improvements to our knowledge soon as this affects many people every day. It is frustrating to patients and dentists all the same. We’re hoping to have better answers this year.

This explains why dental patients have such a hard time telling their dentist which tooth is causing them pain. This inability to communicate the source of their pain can be quite frustrating for these patients and their dentists. If x-rays or visual inspection do not reveal the source of the pain, helping relieve the pain proves difficult. Sometimes even impossible. However, having a great dentist with lots of experience can help with this a lot sometimes. When there is no visible sign of pain then the dentist can rely on past experiences to diagnose where the pain could be coming from. As technology gets better this is getting easier as well. There are new technologies and methods learned every year and patients can gain a lot from this. Dentists will be able to explain where pain is coming from better and why. This will also result in better dental visits and more accurate diagnosis. All of this is to benefit everyone.

This study illustrates the difficulty of people to ascertain which tooth is bothering them in some cases and shows that more research in our understanding of how the brain processes pain in general and tooth pain specifically. This research will allow dentists to develop better treatments and medication for tooth pain patients. This process is getting better all the time.