A large portion of the population is currently
living with chronic pain. Average age and lifestyle may be resulting in an
increase in particular types of chronic pain, but we are probably better off
today than the population was years ago. However, it is still a hard row to hoe and can consume a large fraction of your time and thoughts.
There is increasing evidence that, because of the
plasticity of our brains, chronic pain induces measurable changes in local grey matter. Baliki et al have come up with a better way of
classifying those changes (1). They had a group of 120 subjects with about a
third being healthy young people and three other groups of middle-aged people
with one of three chronic pain conditions.
The methodology was to quantify the local morphology of 82
different regions of the brains. The method used was voxel-based morphometry,
VBM, which just means estimating the regional volume of material associated with
defined activities.
They found that there were significant changes in
amounts of grey matter at the 82 regions depending on the type of chronic pain.
The differences were sufficient to produce characteristic 82 element barcodes,
so the barcode for someone with chronic back pain was easily distinguished from
someone with chronic osteoarthritis pain. The clarity of the characteristic
barcodes increased with the length of time that the chronic condition had been
present and its severity.
It is interesting to speculate where this could go
in terms of diagnostic possibilities. The study was careful to exclude anyone
suffering from depression, which is a common adjunct to chronic pain, as it
might blur the barcode. However, using barcode changes to quantify the
effectiveness of treatment could become an effective measure.
The downside? Well, if the insurance companies and
their lawyers get hold of it, who knows what might happen to payouts for
accidents. Politicians too might start looking at disability classification
based on barcodes and their intensity.
