This article pointed out the neurological, if not anatomical, similarities between the consequences of experience chronic pain and psychiatric illness such as depression, anxiety disorder, and, schizophrenia (psychotic kinda disorder). The findings also go along with results I summarized in previous postings (e.g., chicken and egg) in that there is a high comorbidity between chronic pain and psychiatric disorders.
Essentially, this study was rested on the assumption of Default Mode Network (DMN)- a natural phenomenon occurring in your brain to balance out the amount of activities you head has to carry on. For ordinary people, when performing certain tasks, certain region of the brain will become more active, and, as a result, other regions will become quieter or at rest-- or in the default mode. However, for patients with illness such as depression, anxiety disorder, and, schizophrenia, it has been established that the DMN is interrupted. Following this trend of thought, the authors would like to see whether the DMN disruption also exists in chronic pain patients.
The experiment involved 15 healthy participants and 15 patients suffering from chronic pain. These participants were requested to perform simple visual attention tasks.
The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess the potential differences in the brain resting activities between the normals and the chronic pain patients due to the assumption that chronic pain perception could "leave a mark beyond cortical circuits involved in perception."And, essentially, what this study suggest is that "the brain of a chronic pain patient is not simply a healthy brain processing pain information;" like that for patients with depression, anxiety disorder, attention deficit disorder, and schizophrenia, it is one that has been altered by persistent pains through a prolong period of time.
The question Ratprincess would ask is... Would it be possible to reset my brain back to the disruptive state of DMN reflecting only my propensity for depression and psychosis and how could it be done following the neuroplasticity assumption? In addition, being well-endowed with multiple labeling, is the impact of pain additive or synergistic to the originally destructive state?
And, of course, one thing I could not stop wondering is... what is the chance of the chronic pain complicated my preexisting mental health condition and by how much?
For more information, please check the following website: http://www.chialvo.net/
P.S. me no expert in this field and have only limited cognitive capacity to spare. Please correct me shall I make mistakes in my summary of the article or please go read it yourself....
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment