Does Chronic Back Pain Change the Brain?

Using data from ten published studies concerning 293 patients with chronic back pain (CBP) and 624 healthy controls, researchers observed that the CBP patients had reduced grey matter in the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex extending to the anterior cingulate cortex and the right medial prefrontal cortex extending to the orbitofrontal cortex. These areas of the brain are believed to be associated with risk, fear, inhibition of emotional responses, decision making, self control, reward anticipation, ethics, morality, and the retrieval of remote long-term memory, among others. The findings may help further advance the understanding of the pathophysiology of chronic back pain. Clinical Journal of Pain, October 2017

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