INEWS: New smartphone app uses flashing light to treat chronic pain

Description

Researchers have created a smartphone app which uses flashing light, audio and brain activity tracking to treat patients with chronic pain.

Scientists at the University of Manchester found sufferers’ pain could be alleviated when exposed to light flashing in the ‘alpha frequency’, at a rate of 10 cycles per second.

Watching the flickering light through a smartphone-powered virtual reality headset helps to suppress pain responses in the brain, leading to the team developing an app allowing the patient to select their desired frequency between 1 hertz (Hz) and 18 Hz.