Re: Evidence that chronic pain changes brain function

On Feb 6, 8:42 am, "OldGoat" <oldgoatm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chronic pain seen altering how brain works

By Julie SteenhuysenTue Feb 5, 5:50 PM ET

Brain scans of people in chronic pain show a state of constant activity in
areas that should be at rest, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday, a finding
that could help explain why pain patients have higher rates of depression,
anxiety and other disorders.

They said chronic pain seems to alter the way people process information
that is unrelated to pain.

"It seems that enduring pain for a long time affects brain function in
response to even minimally demanding attention tasks completely unrelated to
pain," the researchers wrote in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Dante Chialvo, a researcher at Northwestern University in Chicago who worked
on the study, said: "People with chronic pain -- meaning pain that lasts
more than six months after their injury -- have many other issues that
affect their quality of life as much as pain. It is not known where they
come from."

Recent studies have shown that in healthy people, certain regions of the
brain take over during a resting state, something known as a default mode
network. "It takes care of your brain when your brain is at rest," Chialvo
said in a telephone interview.

When a person performs a task, this network quiets down, he said, but not in
people with chronic pain.

Instead, a front region of the cortex mostly associated with emotion is
constantly active, disrupting the normal equilibrium.

To study this activity, Chialvo did a type of brain scan known as functional
magnetic resonance imaging on 15 people with chronic back pain and 15
healthy people.

They gave their volunteers a simple attention task -- tracking a moving bar
on a computer screen -- to observe the brain shifting out of default mode to
handle the task.

Both groups performed the task well but when they measured areas of the
brain activated, differences emerged.

"Where we were surprised is the difference in how much brain they used to do
the task compared with the healthy group. It was 50 times larger," Chialvo
said.

They said disruptions in this default network could explain why pain
patients have problems with attention, sleep disturbances and even
depression.

"These findings suggest that the brain of a chronic pain patient is not
simply a healthy brain processing pain information but rather it is altered
by the persistent pain in a manner reminiscent of other neurological
conditions associated with cognitive impairments," they wrote.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)

--
Be Sure to Check Out the PAYNE HERTZ blog, for people with chronic pain, by
people with chronic pain.
join in at:http://paynehertz.blogspot.com

Aloha All and OG!

Not that you, OG, aren't part of the "All" in my greeting, I just
wanted to make sure that you don't get upset with me about posting
ANOTHER ARTICLE about the same study, but from a different news
source.

I subscribe to "Psych Central", a newsletter all about everything and
anything that could and does affect the human brain. It's been an
excellent source of information for keeping up with the latest
"findings" regarding all the varieties of how "stuff" affects our
brains. I have it as a 'module' on my HOME page and the 5 articles
with the latest news and information changes from day to day. I have
to tell you all that when I saw this article in that module, I got
what little bit of an adrenaline "rush" I only get now (it's barely
perceptible now that I've been dealing with a fairly high level of
constant pain for over a decade-LOL!) and quickly clicked on the link.

I didn't see that you, OG, had posted an article about the same study
but from a different source, at the time. Sorry. I did notice that
there are some small/minor differences between the two, so I thought
it couldn't hurt to have them both in here. I hope that's alright with
you as I'm not trying to impugn your choices of reading material or
anything. Still friends? <nervous grin>

I am VERY, VERY happy to see that all those researchers, scientists,
doctors and/or "white-coats" now have something physical that they can
see in black and white as it seems the vast majority of them choose to
be ignorant on such subjects regarding chronic pain. In fact, I even
have some "friends and relatives" who, after telling them exactly what
this study proves, enjoy frustrating me and making me feel like a
mental case of some sort. I think we all have a couple or a few of
"them" in our lives. Correct?

OK, Here it is and if anyone wants the link to this, I'll be more than
happy to post it or email it to you because at the end of every one of
their articles, the always list around 10 other links that are
'related' to whatever one you just finished reading! This is a great
newsletter for those of us with CP, depression, anxiety or anything
that could be grounded in living with long term intense/severe pain.
Enjoy:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chronic Pain Drains the Brain
By: Rick Nauert,
Ph.D.
Reviewed by: John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
Senior News
Editor
on February 7, 2008

Thursday, Feb. 7 (Psych Central) -- The means by which persistent or
chronic pain affects an individual's ability to live a 'normal' life
has been clarified by investigators at Northwestern University's
Feinberg School of Medicine.
People with persistent pain live a life that often includes coping
with a host of symptoms beyond the non-stop sensation of throbbing
pain. They also have trouble sleeping, are often depressed, anxious
and even have difficulty making simple decisions.
In the new study, researchers identified a clue that may explain how
suffering long-term pain could trigger these other pain-related
symptoms.
Scientists found that in a healthy brain all the regions exist in a
state of equilibrium. When one region is active, the others quiet
down. But in people with chronic pain, a front region of the cortex
mostly associated with emotion "never shuts up," said Dante Chialvo,
lead author and associate research professor of physiology at the
Feinberg School.
"The areas that are affected fail to deactivate when they should."
They are stuck on full throttle, wearing out neurons and altering
their connections to each other.
This is the first demonstration of brain disturbances in chronic pain
patients not directly related to the sensation of pain. The study will
be published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Chialvo and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) to scan the brains of people with chronic low back pain and a
group of pain-free volunteers while both groups were tracking a moving
bar on a computer screen.
The study showed the pain sufferers performed the task well but "at
the expense of using their brain differently than the pain-free
group," Chialvo said.
When certain parts of the cortex were activated in the pain-free
group, some others were deactivated, maintaining a cooperative
equilibrium between the regions. This equilibrium also is known as the
resting state network of the brain. In the chronic pain group,
however, one of the nodes of this network did not quiet down as it did
in the pain-free subjects.
This constant firing of neurons in these regions of the brain could
cause permanent damage, Chialvo said. "We know when neurons fire too
much they may change their connections with other neurons and or even
die because they can't sustain high activity for so long," he
explained.
'If you are a chronic pain patient, you have pain 24 hours a day,
seven days a week, every minute of your life," Chialvo said. "That
permanent perception of pain in your brain makes these areas in your
brain continuously active. This continuous dysfunction in the
equilibrium of the brain can change the wiring forever and could hurt
the brain."
Chialvo hypothesized the subsequent changes in wiring "may make it
harder for you to make a decision or be in a good mood to get up in
the morning. It could be that pain produces depression and the other
reported abnormalities because it disturbs the balance of the brain as
a whole."
He said his findings show it is essential to study new approaches to
treat patients not just to control their pain but also to evaluate and
prevent the dysfunction that may be generated in the brain by the
chronic pain.

Source: Northwestern University

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aloha Just For Now,
Hawaiian Wayne
.

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