Abstract
Chronic pain is a common ailment present worldwide and across all age groups. It is concomitant with a plethora of other medical syndromes, including migraine and other headache disorders, chronic back pain (CBP), phantom limb pain, fibromyalgia (FM), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), pain disorder, chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain (CPP), and provoked vestibulodynia (PVD). Recent research has identified morphological changes in the brain, in both gray (GM) and white matter (WM), associated with chronic pain disorders. These findings suggest a common “brain signature” of common pain, which can be drawn upon for future study. These findings also suggest important physiological underpinnings of chronic pain. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed thus far, including neurogenesis, neuronal morphological/cerebral vasculature changes, and non-neuronal cell genesis and morphological changes for GM changes, and myelination and axonal changes for WM changes. Research has also shown these brain morphological changes to be at least partly reversible, suggesting a common, predictable pattern of chronic pain that can be exploited in treatment.
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