What David Lynch And Tylenol Can Tell You About The Brain

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Researchers used a clip from the David Lynch film Rabbits to make volunteers uneasy. Afterward some people got Tylenol, which appeared to help them cope.

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Even for a hardcore David Lynch fan, the idea that a film of his would be used to weird people out in a psychology experiment is a tad weird.

But it gets much stranger than that — fast.

Imagine the experiment involved testing whether Tylenol could help people overcome the angst triggered by a four-minute dose of Lynch. A related experiment tested Tylenol's effect on people asked to write about what happens to their bodies after they die.

At the University of British Columbia, psychologists went both places.

Their findings: Tylenol may relieve more than physical pain; it may just dull existential aches, too. The results were published by the journalPsychological Science.

"We're fairly confident the effect we have seen reflects an underlying process," Daniel Randles, one of the researchers, tells Shots. "What we're not confident in is that Tylenol would be useful in any clinical setting," says Randles, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of British Columbia. "We would in no way recommend Tylenol as a therapy."

Still, the findings are consistent with a growing body of research that suggests the brain processes physical and emotional pain in similar ways. Other experiments had found Tylenol helped people cope with social pain and frustration as well, Randles says.