Ever wondered why some people experience chronic pain than others from similar injuries? It’s because their brains are hardwired differently to respond to injuries, scientists say.
A team led by Prof Vania Apakarian from the Northwestern University in Chicago found that the emotional state of the brain plays a key role in how a person responds to injuries.
In their first longitudinal brain imaging study, the team tracked participants with a back injury and found that chronic pain emerges as a result of an emotional response to an injury and the process involves interaction between two brain regions — frontal cortex and nucleus accumbens — that are linked to emotional and motivational behaviour.
“The injury itself is not enough to explain the ongoing pain. It has to do with the injury combined with the state of the brain,” Prof Apakarian was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph.
The more emotionally the brain reacted to the initial injury, the more likely it was that pain will persist after the injury has healed, he said. Prof. Apakarian added: “It may be that these sections of the brain are more excited to begin with in certain individuals, or there may be genetic and environmental influences that predispose these brain regions to interact at an excitable level.”
The study involved 40 volunteers who had suffered back pain lasting one to four months. Brain scans were carried out on the participants over the course of a year.