The approach “provides a way into the brain to track pain,” says Katherine Martucci, a neuroscientist who studies chronic pain at Duke University School of Medicine.than with diabetes, depression or high blood pressure, researchers reported May 16 in. Chronic pain is also incredibly complex, an amalgam influenced by the body, brain, context, emotions and expectations, Martucci says. That complexity makes chronic pain seemingly invisible to an outsider, and very difficult to treat.
Four thin wires with electrodes were implanted into the brain of a research participant with chronic pain. These electrodes are controlled by two devices implanted on the upper chest.But before researchers stimulated the brain, they needed to know how chronic pain was affecting it. For about 3 to 6 months, the implanted electrodes monitored brain signals of these people as they went about their lives.
In many ways, the patterns were unique to each person, but there was overlap: Brain activity in the OFC, an area at the front of the brain just behind the eyes, tracked with people’s chronic pain levels. Some unexpected pain patterns cropped up along the way, too. Two volunteers’ pain fluctuated on a roughly three-day cycle, for instance.
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