Chronic pains are mostly caused by the emotional sphere than other factors. That is the conclusion reached by the researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago, who have scanned the brains of forty volunteers.
It turns out that emotions determine predisposition to chronic pain as a result of injury. Scientists from Northwestern University studied 40 volunteers, each of whom complained of back pain for 1-4 months. The brain scans showed that the pain arises as an outcome of emotional reactions to the trauma. It was also found that pain involves two areas of the brain – the frontal lobe of the cortex and the nucleus accumbens.
Professor Ivan Apakaryan commented that the more emotionally the brain reacts to the trauma, the more likely it is that the pain will remain even when the injury is healed. Perhaps certain areas of the brain are initially overly active in people with chronic pain, as told by the head of the research team.
Another consequence of the research is the possibility of using brain scan accurately enough (with 85 percent accuracy) to determine the development of further pain. Nucleus accumbens would “teach” the brain how to assess the phenomena of the external world and respond to them. Therefore, it is probable that the nucleus lead to chronic pain.
