Kammers says pain can result from confusion in what she describes as the brain's representation of the body. She illustrates the concept with the often severe pain amputees report feeling in their missing limb.

The best example of what can happen when the body representation is disturbed is phantom limb pain, where one hypothesis is that the brain needs to be updated with a representation of the body. So the body has lost a limb, but the brain still represents it as being present. And this mismatch can cause pain.

In an interview via Skype, Kammers says if she and her colleagues get a better understanding of the power of self-touch to ease pain, it might become part of pain treatment.

That's the ultimate goal. That would be great if that would be possible.

And Kammers says she does think that may be possible. Her study on the effect of touch, specifically self-touch, on pain, is published in Current Biology.