A pleasant picture may help soothe pain by taking your mind off it, say Canadian researchers who looked at the link between mood and pain.

"Emotions or mood can alter how we react to pain, since they're interlinked," says Mathieu Roy, formerly with the University of Montreal and lead author of the study.

"Our tests revealed when pain is perceived by our brain and how that pain can be amplified when combined with negative emotions," Roy, now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in New York City, added in a release.

In the study, which appears in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers gave small but painful electric shocks to 13 people. The shocks caused knee-jerk reactions that could be measured.

During the shocks, subjects looked at:

A pleasant image, such as water-skiing in summer.

An unpleasant image, like a vicious bear.

A neutral image, such as a book.

Brain reactions were measured at the same time.

When subjects saw unpleasant pictures while getting shocks, they showed stronger pain response than when they looked at pleasant pictures, Roy said.

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