Rewiring Of Brain Responsible For Baffling Chronic Pain

Many patients suffer from chronic pain which is a a disease that occurs when pain is present after the injury has healed. When they studied people with normal brains and compared them to those that are suffering they discovered that the areas of the brain that are responsible for pain, temperature and emotion looked like someone had rewired them. This study was done at Northwestern University and these patients were diagnosed with what is called Complex Region Pain Syndrome (CRPS). This study was done with a total of 44 patient, 22 normal and 22 suffering.
This disease begins with a serious injury to the hand or foot and then radiates to the arm or the entire body at times. This only occurs in about 5% of patients as the pain usually goes away after the injury heals in 95% of patients. The skin usually turns either blue or red and the temperature of the body goes from hot to cold. They discovered that the rewiring occurs in the white matter of the brain unlike they had thought for many years that it happened in the gray matter. Patients have also been suicidal as the pain has become extreme. Many patients were not believed at first but now have been taken very seriously.
The significance of this discovery is of great importance because physicians can now try and find pharmaceutical drugs that will treat the white matter neurons of the brain and not the gray matter neurons like they were previously doing.
This is very interesting to me because we have just finished studying neurophysiology and it is interesting how the brain can even seem to rewire itself regardless of pain. This discovery can lead to many positive findings and can also help save the some 200,000 people that suffer from this disease.

Jonathan Dougherty

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/131081.php