Israel’s Technion Scientists Uncover Brain’s Role in Chronic Pain

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The researchers found that communication between various memory centers in the brain could influence the development of chronic pain.

By Shula Rosen

We all experience pain and discomfort, but the reason why some people develop chronic pain and others don’t has been a mystery.

Scientists at Israel’s Technion University, together with researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, have uncovered this mystery by focusing on the central role the brain plays in the development of chronic pain.

The researchers studied victims of car accidents suffering whiplash and found that communication between various areas in the brain could determine whether the patient will experience chronic pain.

The study found that the more the hippocampus, which is responsible for the brain’s short-term memory, “talked” to the cortex, the center for long-term memory, shortly after the accident, the more likely the patient would suffer from chronic pain a year later.

Communication between the two brain memory centers encodes messages and can increase the patient’s perception of discomfort long after the incident.

The scientists also found that the patient’s level of anxiety during and immediately following the incident was another factor in the development of chronic pain.

Paulo Branco, MD, assistant professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, explained, “This creates expectations and associations. If the memory has high emotional significance, then it makes these patients associate this movement with pain. When the brain receives these signals, it pays more attention to them based on the painful memories that were formed by the accident.”

“While we commonly think of pain as relating only to an injury, it is the brain that actually makes up the pain experience,” he continued. “The brain makes the decision about whether a movement should be painful or not, and we think this may rely on previous experiences stored in memory.”

The scientists explained that the research is instrumental in developing interventions that would interfere with the early encoding of pain signals in the brain and can allow medical professionals to prevent chronic pain rather than having to treat it after it has developed.