healthmedicinet

Four individuals with chronic pain were monitored using objective indicators of pain severity as they went about their regular lives.n

One of the most significant and fundamental sensations a person may have is pain. Although there is a lot of proof that the brain processes pain signals, perception of pain. Despite the fact that everyone experiences pain, there has never been a means to evaluate it objectively.nn

Most prior studies on the brain signals responsible for pain have relied on electroencephalography. Furthermore, although doctors widely recognize that chronic pain is not just an extension of acute pain—like stubbing your toe—it remains unknown how the brain circuits behind acute and chronic pain relate to each other.n

Our study was part of a cingulate cortex, an area associated with emotion.n

We asked the patients about their pain severity levels several times a day for up to six months. We then built machine learning models to try to match and predict each patient’s self-reported pain intensity scores with snapshots of their brain activity signals. These brain signals consisted of electrical waves that could be decomposed into different frequencies, similar to how a low frequencies in the orbitofrontal cortex corresponded with each of the patients’ subjective pain intensities, providing an objective measure of chronic pain. The larger the shift in low-frequency activity we measured, the more likely the patient was experiencing intense pain.

Next, we wanted to compare the relationship between chronic pain and acute pain. We examined how the brain responded to short-term, intense pain caused by applying heat to the patients’ bodies. Based on data from two participants, we found that the anterior processing acute pain than chronic pain. This experiment provides the first direct evidence that chronic pain involves information-processing areas of brain distinct from those involved in acute pain.n

Chronic pain, defined as pain lasting more than three months, affects up to 1 in 5 people in the U.S. In 2019, the incidence of chronic pain was more common than that of diabetes, high blood pressure or depression.n

Neuropathic pain resulting from damage to the deep brain stimulation.n

Although our study provides a proof of concept that signals from specific brain regions can serve as an objective measure of chronic pain, it is more likely that pain signals are distributed over a wide brain network.n

We still don’t know what other brain regions may harbor important pain signals that may more accurately reflect subjective pain. It is also unclear whether the signals we found would apply to patients with other pain conditions.n

We hope to use these newly discovered neural biomarkers to develop personalized brain stimulation as a way to treat brain stimulation on demand, similar to how a thermostat operates.

This article is republished from n

nn