MONDAY, July 2 (HealthDay News) -- Whether a person's injury will lead to chronic pain may depend on the level of communication between two parts of their brain, a new study finds. 
 
 According to the report, published in the current issue of Nature Neuroscience, brain regions related to emotional and motivational behavior seem to communicate more in those who develop chronic pain. 
 
 "For the first time, we can explain why people who may have the exact same initial pain either go on to recover or develop chronic pain," senior study author A. Vania Apkarian, a professor of physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a university news release. 
 
 "The injury by itself is not enough to explain the ongoing pain," Apkarian added. "It has to do with the injury combined with the state of the brain." 
 
 For the study, the researchers used brain scans to examine interaction between two parts of the brain -- the frontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens -- in 40 patients who had back pain develop recently for the first time. The patients were followed for one year. 
 
 By analyzing the scans, the investigators were able to predict whether the patients would develop chronic pain with an 85 percent level of accuracy. 
 
 The findings suggest that the brain's emotional reaction to the injury is crucial. 
 
 "It may be that these sections of the brain are more excited to begin with in certain individuals, or there may be genetic and environmental influences that predispose these brain regions to interact at an excitable level," Apkarian said. "Now we hope to develop new therapies for treatment based on this finding." 
 
 An estimated 30 million to 40 million U.S. adults suffer from chronic pain. Back pain is especially common. 
 
 "Chronic pain is one of the most expensive health care conditions in the U.S., yet there still is not a scientifically validated therapy for this condition," Apkarian said. 
 
 Although the study showed an association between levels of communication in the brain and chronic pain, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship. 
 
 More information 
 
 For more about chronic pain, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine. 
 
 Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved. ||||| January 20, 2014 
 
 MONDAY, Jan. 20, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Your brain structure might determine how sensitive you are to pain, a new study suggests. 
 
 Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that people with less gray matter in certain areas of the brain perceive pain more intensely. The findings might help lead to better ways to diagnose, treat and even prevent pain, they said. 
 
 Gray matter in the brain processes information, while white matter coordinates communications between different regions of the brain. 
 
 “These kinds of structural differences can provide a foundation for the development of better tools for the diagnosis, classification, treatment and even prevention of pain,” study senior author Robert Coghill said in a Wake Forest news release. 
 
 For the study, which was published online recently in the journal Pain, the researchers assessed pain sensitivity in 116 healthy volunteers. They asked the participants to rate the intensity of pain when a small area of skin on their arm or leg was heated to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. After this pain test, the participants underwent MRI scans to examine their brain structure. 
 
 People who reported greater pain had less gray matter in brain regions involved in internal thoughts and attention control, the study found. These regions include the posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus and areas of the posterior parietal cortex. 
 
 The posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus are part of the so-called “default-mode network” — a set of linked brain regions associated with the free-flowing thoughts that people have while daydreaming, the researchers said. 
 
 “Default-mode activity may compete with brain activity that generates an experience of pain, such that individuals with high default-mode activity would have reduced sensitivity to pain,” Coghill said. 
 
 Areas of the posterior parietal cortex play an important role in attention, he said, and people who are good at keeping their attention focused might also be good at keeping pain under control. 
 
 More information 
 
 The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about pain.
– About 30 million to 40 million American adults suffer from chronic pain—but it may be all in their heads, a new study says. Researchers looked at 40 volunteers, all back pain sufferers, and found that brain scans could predict with 85% accuracy whether their pain would become chronic. At issue is the emotional response to injury and the relationship between two brain regions, the nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex, the Telegraph reports. When these brain regions—related to motivational and emotional behavior—get to talking, the odds increase that pain will become chronic, explains PsychCentral. ''The injury itself is not enough to explain the ongoing pain,” says the study's lead researcher. "It has to do with the injury combined with the state of the brain.'' But while brain scans did connect chronic pain to communication levels in the brain, they did not establish a causal link, notes Health Day News.