German researchers have found that not only do painful memories and associations put the brain on alert and verbal stimuli also lead to pain reactions in the brain.

The findings explains why a physician giving a vaccine and saying, "This will only hurt for a second," offers no solace at all, say Dr. Thomas Weiss of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and his team.

Once a person associates the pain of the needle with the verbal statement "it'll only hurt for a second," at a later date, as soon as the needle touches either a child's or adult's skin the piercing pain can be felt very clearly, Weiss further explains.

Weiss said in a statement, "After such an experience it is enough to simply imagine a needle at the next vaccination appointment to activate our pain memory. These findings show that words alone are capable of activating our pain matrix -- our results suggest as well that verbal stimuli have a more important meaning than we have thought so far." (With Inputs from Agencies)