Health
Brain activity predicts chronic pain
at a glance
- In a small study of four people, researchers identified patterns of brain activity associated with chronic pain.
- A deeper understanding of the brain activity underlying chronic pain may help improve diagnosis and treatment.
Chronic pain, or pain that lasts longer than three months, is a major cause of disability. Some types of chronic pain are difficult to treat and cause considerable distress. Pain is often measured by subjective patient reporting. The lack of objective measures for chronic pain hinders the development of better diagnoses and treatments.
Previous studies to develop objective pain measures have focused on pain-related brain activity. However, most of this research was done on acute pain in healthy people. It is not clear whether the results of this study apply to people with chronic pain. Furthermore, studies in people with chronic pain are only for short clinically relevant periods.
For the study, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, led by Dr. Prasad Silvalkar, funded by the NIH, studied four people with chronic neuropathic pain (due to nerve injury or disease). Three of the participants had chronic pain that developed after stroke. A fourth had phantom limb pain, pain that appeared to come from an amputated limb.
Participants surgically implanted electrodes in two brain regions, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), to study an approach called deep brain stimulation. These regions are thought to be involved in different aspects of the pain response. Electrodes recorded activity in these brain regions over several months. During this time, participants rated their pain intensity multiple times per day. The research results are natural neuroscience May 22, 2023.
Researchers used machine learning to develop a model that predicts pain severity from ACC and OFC activity. The model was able to distinguish between high-intensity and low-intensity pain states. However, it rarely predicted participants’ accurate pain ratings. His OFC activity was more consistent across patients than ACC activity in predicting chronic pain.
The researchers also looked at activity associated with acute pain. They induced acute pain by applying heat to different parts of the body. Although the prediction of acute pain relied heavily on ACC, the model was only able to predict acute pain in her 2 out of 4 participants. Changes in activity predictive of chronic pain tended to persist and were of the order of seconds in duration. For acute pain, bursts occurred with a shorter frequency.
This result suggests that the OFC signal may be an objective marker of chronic pain. These signals may be used to diagnose chronic pain and measure the effectiveness of new treatments. The findings also highlight different brain mechanisms underlying chronic and acute pain. This may help develop interventions such as deep brain stimulation to reduce pain.
“If you think about it, pain is one of the most basic experiences an organism can have,” says Silvalker. “Nevertheless, there are still many unknowns about how pain works. By studying pain responses in the brain and developing better tools to potentially influence We want to provide options for people with pain conditions.”
The researchers point out that larger studies are needed to determine how common the findings are. Brain regions outside the ACC and OFC may also be important for pain responses. Further research is needed to identify these.
Funding: NIH’s Innovative Neurotechnology Advances in Brain Research (BRAIN) initiative, the Assistance to End Addiction Long Term Initiative (HEAL) initiative, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
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Sources 2/ https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/brain-activity-predicts-chronic-pain The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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