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Chronic Pain Shrinks The Brain

Posted by timothy on from the as-long-as-it-doesn't-touch-my-10-percent dept.

An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting on a study showing that people with chronic lower back pain have 5 to 11 percent less gray matter than pain-free folks. Its not known for sure why, but the thinking is that neurons just get worn out as the mind deals with the pain."

3 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Obviously. by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Its not known for sure why, but the thinking is that neurons just get worn out as the mind deals with the pain."

    Right. Either that or being stupid hurts.

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  2. Re:Study Problems by NiceGeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    Salt is bad for you.

  3. /.'s Chronic Problems with Causality by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It is unfortunately a common occurrence here that causality is implied in the stories. This story implies that chronic pain causes the brain to shrink, however the article only links lessor amounts of gray matter with greater amounts of pain.

    Possible causes? Perhaps the pain does cause the brain to shrink. Perhaps people who are predisposed to pain are also born with smaller brains. Perhaps their brains shrunk due to another cause and the shrinkage is causing the pain. Or perhaps with such a small study (26 people) they happened to choose people who just happened to have smaller amount of gray matter.

    I would also like to note that brain functions that make humans able to reason more effectively are located in the gray matter part of the brain, which is the region that was found to be reduced. However, it is also known that the amount of gray matter is not strongly correlated with intelligence. (Actually, it has been found that the amount of folding, that is the number of creases on the brain, affects intelligence much more.) So, there is no reason yet to think that these people are actually suffering any loss of function.

    So while interesting, until more research is done, these results should not be over-interpreted.