{"id":382,"date":"2009-02-11T00:19:11","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T04:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/?p=382"},"modified":"2016-11-13T22:02:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T02:02:17","slug":"yes-pain-is-in-your-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/382\/yes-pain-is-in-your-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Pain Is In Your Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A great summary article was published recently about CRPS, a pain condition with symptoms of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>burning pain<\/li>\n<li>sensitivity to touch<\/li>\n<li>pain in response to non-painful stimuli<\/li>\n<li>weakness, tremor and muscle spasms<\/li>\n<li>changes in temperature and increased sweating<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If pain is felt in your <em>body<\/em>, why is it thought to be a problem in your <em>brain<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>In CRPS (and very possibly other pain conditions), changes occur in your brain to cause your &#8220;body map&#8221; to become distorted. What does this mean?\u00a0In your brain, there&#8217;s a representation of your body. Places that are sensitive\u00a0&#8211; for example, your fingers &#8211; have a big representation. Places that aren&#8217;t sensitive &#8211; let&#8217;s say, your back &#8211; have a small representation. In CRPS, this &#8220;body map&#8221; becomes distorted in the areas of pain. It also seems that the <em>more distorted<\/em> your body map becomes, the <em>more pain<\/em> you experience.<\/p>\n<p>This distorted body map is responsible for symptoms such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>errors in noticing where you&#8217;re being touched<\/li>\n<li>errors in how big your body parts feels<\/li>\n<li>errors in movement<\/li>\n<li>touch in 1 area causing feelings in another<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What this new understanding of pain provides for us is good news. Because we now better know where the problem is, so we&#8217;ve developed new treatments for CRPS. <strong>Mirror therapy<\/strong> and <strong>motor imagery programs<\/strong> are 2 such treatments. These seem to work by reversing the changes that occur in your brain in CRPS.<\/p>\n<p>The original article is in press in <em>The European Journal of Pain<\/em>, titled <em>Cortical Changes in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), <\/em>by Swart, Stins, and Beek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A great summary article was published recently about CRPS, a pain condition with symptoms of: burning pain sensitivity to touch pain in response to non-painful stimuli weakness, tremor and muscle spasms changes in temperature and increased sweating If pain is felt in your body, why is it thought to be a problem in your brain? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7646,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/7646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}