Chronic pain and brain topography

Thursday, November 06, 2008 | 1 Comments

In September a new study was released via the journal Brain. The researchers write that fibromyalgia patients often report memory and attention problems in addition to pain, stiffness and sleep disturbance. What they wanted to determine, though, if fibrofibromyalgia patients' memory and attention problems have any correllation with changes in the morphology (structure and shape) of the brain.

The researchers conclude that the study's results provide clear evidence of memory and attention problems in fibromyalgia as well as the correlation of both pain and neurocognitive problems with brain structure.

"Our data suggest that, in addition to chronic pain, [fibromyalgia] patients suffer from neurocognitive deficits that correlate with local brain morphology in the frontal lobe and anterior cingulate gyrus, which may be interpreted to indicate structural correlates of pain-cognition interaction."

Bottom line, chronic pain changes not only your cognitive skills it is also correlated to a change in the structure of your brain.

Even when I was a kid, I liked thinking of myself as smart. So to be faced with the fact that my brain, the actual grey matter stuff, has been changed and that change goes with a lessening of my "smartness" level saddens me. I feel like part of me has slipped away, and I wasn't even aware of it.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, so your not a fucking 120 IQ. So the fuck what! Does that somehow change your quality of life? No! Not unless you let it. That choice is yours. IQ and higher cognitive process are for ass holes. Real output, productivity, and enjoyment come from people that take what they have and DO something with it. Get off you butt and DO! Build, play, fuck, laugh, live, go. Love --Pops

Post a Comment