Neuroscientists from the University of South Australia studied people with chronic back pain, the most common painful condition which costs western countries billions of dollars in lost productivity every year.
They stimulated the painful area and a non-painful area. Their finding was not what most back pain sufferers would have expected. The stimuli were processed more slowly by the brain if they came from the painful area.
Equally surprising, the same effect occurred if the stimuli were delivered to a healthy body part near the painful area.
Lead author of the study, Professor Lorimer Moseley, said in people with chronic pain, there are changes in the way the brain processes information from and about the painful body part.
“What is remarkable is that the problem affects the space around the body as well as the body itself,” he said.
Experiments showed that if a hand was held near the painful area of the back, it was also affected.
Professor Moseley concluded, “Obviously, it is not external space that is distorted but the ability of the brain to represent that space within its neural circuitry.
“This finding opens up a whole new area of research into the way the brain allows us to interact with the world and how this can be disrupted in chronic pain.”
Pain can be a helpful tool to make sure we don’t exceed our limits, but when it persists it can be overprotective and detrimental. In overreacting, our brain responds to pain by changing our perception of the world around us.
Research shows that people experiencing chronic pain see the world as a harsher place – distances are longer and hills are steeper. Pain can make us see the world more hurtful.