NEUROLOGY
Chronic Complex Region Pain Syndrome
SOURCE: Journal Neuron, by Cell Press
Chronic complex region pain syndrome (CRPS) is a debilitating pain condition that usually begins with an injury causing significant damage to the hand or the foot.
For 5 percent of patients, pain rages on long past any healing, and sometimes for the rest of a person's life. About 200,00 people in the U.S. have CRPS.
These new findings by scientists at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine begin to explain a mysterious condition that the medical community had doubted was real.
Investigated were gray matter morphometry and white matter anisotropy in CRPS patients and matching controls.
Peering into the brains of people with CRPS, scientists discovered that a patient's brain looked like an inept cable guy had changed the hookups, rewiring the areas related to emotion, pain perception and the temperature of their skin.
The changes in the brain take place in the network of tiny, white "cables" that dispatch messages between the neurons. This is called the brain's white matter.
Several years ago, Northwestern researchers discovered chronic pain caused the regions in the brain that contain the neurons - called gray matter because it looks gray - to atrophy.
Reorganization of white matter connectivity in these regions was characterized by branching pattern alterations, as well as increased (VMPFC to insula) and decreased (VMPFC to basal ganglion) connectivity.
This is the first study to link pain with changes in the brain's white matter. Findings were published November 26, 2008 in the journal Neuron.
Learn more:
Clinical Study
The Brain in Chronic CRPS Pain: Abnormal Gray-White Matter Interactions in Emotional and Autonomic Regions; p570
Paul Y. Geha, Marwan N. Baliki, R. Norman Harden, William R. Bauer, Todd B. Parrish, A. Vania Apkarian
Full text or to purchase PDF (1252 kb): http://www.cell.com/neuron/archive
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