As a physical therapist, I work a lot with chronic pain. Its one of the hardest patient types to work with, simply because the origin of the symptoms are deep rooted and often psychological in nature. A new study out of Northwestern University suggests that ones emotions play a HUGE roll in the chronic pain cycle. ""The research involved 40 volunteers who had all suffered an episode of back pain lasting one to four months.
Four brain scans were carried out on each participant over the course of one year.
The results, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, made it possible to predict with 85% accuracy which individuals would go on to develop chronic pain.
The nucleus accumbens teaches the rest of the brain how to evaluate and react to the outside world.
Prof Apakarian said it may use the initial pain signal to teach other parts of the brain to develop chronic pain.
''Now we hope to develop new therapies for treatment based on this finding,'' he added.""
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