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Science

Chronic Pain Shrinks The Brain 60

Posted by timothy from the as-long-as-it-doesn't-touch-my-10-percent dept.
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting on a study showing that people with chronic lower back pain have 5 to 11 percent less gray matter than pain-free folks. Its not known for sure why, but the thinking is that neurons just get worn out as the mind deals with the pain."
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Chronic Pain Shrinks The Brain More

Chronic Pain Shrinks The Brain

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  • pain = shrinkage (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I guess that means pleasure should make thingse GROW

    ugggh - nasty thought here on /. geeks pleasuring themselves.

    Their MINDS you fool - pleasuring THE MIND.

    Get you head out of the gutter!

  • one of the system used by evolution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xutopia ( 469129 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @09:50PM (#10894670) Homepage
    If a system is inadequately evolved it would probably have to suffer through more pain to walk, jog, hunt, gather, etc.. By reducing the brain it could have a bigger impact on reproduction and survival. Perhaps we evolved a trait that helped one another evolve faster.
    • Well...back pain comes from our specific upright posture, where small problems in the stride can be amplified up the body, causing damage in the lower back. I highly doubt that the shrinkage (if it exists) is anything but the brains adverse reaction to high stress, or possibly indicative of some deeper neurological issue that either causes/is caused by the pain.
    • This doesn't actually make sense, though. Natural selection dictates that organisms that are more fit have better chances to survive and thus to reproduce. The level of fitness, however, is logically evaluated by the environment, not by the organism itself. Your hypothesis implies that somehow the organism can detect by itself what traits are defective and then actually take steps to remove *itself* from the gene pool. IMO, this is more akin to a form of self-sacrificial Lamarckism than to evolution.
      • Think of it on a larger scale. It wouldn't trigger all the time, so it's not immediately a disadvantage. However, once the group has gotten large enough, it could evolve faster by quickening the death of weaker elements. And, then, the group could become dominant.
      • I'm not saying that organisms can detect by themselves just that they may have a trait which hinders them more if they don't make the cut.

        I'm in the process of reading the extended phenotype (a follow up to the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins). It makes sense that we develop such a thing if you look at genes rather than organisms as the elements which are affected by natural selection. Organisms are the vehicule for reproduction of these genes. A meta ecosystem of sorts.

        Pain is actually a good thing.

  • Study Problems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sailforsingapore ( 833339 ) <sailforsingapore@gmail.com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @09:54PM (#10894699) Homepage
    I'm inheriently distrustful of these studies, if simply because of the sheer number of flaws that could be present in their design. I remember, in the space of one week last year, hearing three different studies; "Eggs are good for you", "Eggs are bad for you" and finally back to "Eggs are good for you". Without huge problems in the study, they couldn't have come up with such disparate results. Take this with a grain of salt.

    • Re:Study Problems (Score:5, Funny)

      by NiceGeek ( 126629 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:17PM (#10895264)
      Salt is bad for you.

    • Re:Study Problems (Score:4, Insightful)

      by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @01:31AM (#10895886)
      Without huge problems in the study, they couldn't have come up with such disparate results.

      Not at all. The study (or studies) may be perfectly valid, and the problem may be that you're trying to draw a conclusion that's so simple it doesn't reflect the truth. Or different people interpret the results of the study differently.

      Taking the egg example, it's pretty clear that eggs are good for you and eggs are bad for you. They're a rich source of protein, but they're high in cholesterol and fat. Same study, same data, two different interpretations of "good."

      You don't need to be "inherently distrustful" of scientific studies, particularly if they really are scientific. A better place for your distrust is in the oversimplified interpretations we get from the media, which likes to boil things down to a third grade reading level, and from people and corporations with a vested interest in the interpretation who twist data to suit their own agendas.

  • In soviet russia... (Score:3, Funny)

    by nerd256 ( 794968 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @09:58PM (#10894737) Homepage
    Shrinking grey matter causes chronic pain

    Seriously, how do we know what the dependent variable is.

    (and the flaming ensues)
    • ...You are right, but it need not even be that black and white. What if all the people they sampled came from an area with some sort of pollution, they only had a sample size of 26. So many variables, and such a small group. Such drastic findings have to be looked at skeptically.
      • Yes, but you can safely assume that it isn't a bunch of idiots doing this. If it's counted as a 'study' one can assume that it has at least some credibility, although by no means an aura of infallibility.
        • True...but remembering my biology training, it becomes very clear how easy it would be to completely flub such a small scale thing. I remember carrying out much simpler and seemingly straight foreward experiments and getting frightening divergent data. The best example of which was in carrying out an experiment involving fertilizer and cyanobacteria, I was amazed to find that they were all dead, even at the lowest level added of the chemical fertillizers. I later realized that I had created a mild acid with

  • geesh (Score:1)

    by huber ( 723453 )
    thats the dumbest thing ive heard all week. of couse cold case hasn't been on yet.

  • Interestingly enough... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jwriney ( 16598 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @10:21PM (#10894864) Homepage
    You can remove the word "Pain" from the article title, and still have an accurate statement.

    "You have smoked yourself retarded."

    --riney
    • Responsible use of marijuana can be very effective at dealing with chronic pain. Some would argue that being high all the time may have adverse cognitive effects, however, it appears chronic pain can as well.

      I would rather a person go through life with a mild buzz, hell, blitzed out of their minds even, then suffer the pains of MS (either one :)), seizures, IBS, back injuries, etc.

      There are many intelligent, successful people who use marijuana medically and recreationally. The typical image of a burned out

    • One could also substitute "drink"; although there seem to be an awful lot of people who don't need drugs of any sort for an excuse to be ignorant.

      One could just as well, IMO, substitute "TV" for pain. So I fail to see your point.

      SB

    • Re:Interestingly enough... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, removing simply the word pain would render an inaccurate statement. The myth that marijuana smoking shrinks the brain, or causes toxic effects to the brain stems from several fundamentally flawed studies, and the temporary short term memory defecits users experience. The popular drug that is proven to cause brain damage and shrink the brain would be alcohol.

      Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to avoid marijuana, especially because the common method of administration - smoking - is proven

  • Obviously. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @10:44PM (#10895042) Journal
    "Its not known for sure why, but the thinking is that neurons just get worn out as the mind deals with the pain."

    Right. Either that or being stupid hurts.
    • Either that or being stupid hurts.

      Unfortunately being stupid seems only to hurt those around the stupid person, not the stupid person themselves...

  • It hurts just thinking about it...
  • A cold shiver ran down my spine as I read "chronic shrinks the brain" as the story title.

    Phew!!

  • Or, perhaps (Score:3, Interesting)

    by benjamindees ( 441808 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @12:10AM (#10895512) Homepage
    Taking painkillers constantly rots your brain.

    Who could've guessed...

    • Agreed. I know two people who supposedly have fibromyalgia (a chronic pain disorder) - one is doing fine and she's on homeopathic medicine, therapy and acupuncture, and the other is having seizures because she's on such a bizarre coctail of drugs.

      The pharmo-medical complex has made doctors more likely to give a pill for a given problem than refer somebody to a therapist, and the drugs which my friend has been prescribed are highly addictive and cause the body to adapt quickly: the prescription runs out, a

      • Homeopathic "medicine" is provably worthless. See this site [homeowatch.org] for the details. If your friend thinks she's doing better, it's because of a) the placebo effect, b) the other therapies she's getting.

        Even opioids are rarely addictive when properly used for pain management under the supervision of a doctor. Do not mistake physical dependence (a routine, expected and manageable occurrence with long-term opioid use) for "addiction", by definition a harmful psychological disorder. Countless people suffer needlessl

  • Alice Cooper sang about this... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kevin Burtch ( 13372 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @12:11AM (#10895520)
    He knew about the real cause way back in 1980 [lyrics-songs.com]!

    .
  • On first scan I read the title as: Chronic Pain Shrieks The Brain.

    I wonder how many death-metal bands begin as nothing more than a too-good-to-waste name? (and yes, I know a lot end there)

  • /.'s Chronic Problems with Causality (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord Byron II ( 671689 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @12:30AM (#10895624)
    It is unfortunately a common occurrence here that causality is implied in the stories. This story implies that chronic pain causes the brain to shrink, however the article only links lessor amounts of gray matter with greater amounts of pain.

    Possible causes? Perhaps the pain does cause the brain to shrink. Perhaps people who are predisposed to pain are also born with smaller brains. Perhaps their brains shrunk due to another cause and the shrinkage is causing the pain. Or perhaps with such a small study (26 people) they happened to choose people who just happened to have smaller amount of gray matter.

    I would also like to note that brain functions that make humans able to reason more effectively are located in the gray matter part of the brain, which is the region that was found to be reduced. However, it is also known that the amount of gray matter is not strongly correlated with intelligence. (Actually, it has been found that the amount of folding, that is the number of creases on the brain, affects intelligence much more.) So, there is no reason yet to think that these people are actually suffering any loss of function.

    So while interesting, until more research is done, these results should not be over-interpreted.

  • Maybe it isn't the pain itself? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by toddestan ( 632714 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @12:44AM (#10895701)
    Perhaps it's not the pain that causes the brain to shrink, but rather while the brain is occupied with the constant pain it is unable to think about other things and grow?
  • Maybe this is why so many jocks are so dumb.

  • suspect statistics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mopomi ( 696055 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @01:44PM (#10901010)
    As a chronic back pain sufferer, this article was of interest to me. So, instead of just reading the posted link, I found the actual article.
    Most of the method that others are complaining about (only 26 people, etc.--read the article, they're doing things just fine) seems fine to me, but what really bothers me is this:


    Skull-normalized whole-brain neocortical gray matter volume (excluding the cerebellum, deep gray matter, and brainstem; SIENAX analysis) was 528 +- 44 cm^3 (mean SD; n 26) in the CBP brain and 559 +- 42 cm^3 (n 26) in controls, matched for
    age, sex, and scan type (Fig. 1 A). The 30 cm^3 difference in gray matter volume, a 5.4% decrease, was highly significant (paired t test=3.7; p less than .001). A similar measure was derived from the VBM regional analysis: whole-brain mean gray matter density per voxel (VBM modulation analysis). This measure showed a 5.9% decrease in overall gray matter density (0.251 +- 0.031 in CBP subjects; 0.267 +- 0.027 in controls;



    They're claiming that a 30 cm^3 decrease is significant when their 1 sigma error is 42-44 cm^3! 1 sigma! In my field of science, nobody believes you unless the error bars don't overlap (much) with two or three sigma. Basically, everything is essentially the same to within one sigma:
    528+44=572>569;
    569-42=527528.

    Anyway, I'm sure there's some stuff that I missed, but until a larger study is done with better error analysis, I'll take what they've done as probably correct, but with some doubt. . .
  • ooh! I have a hypothesis!

    People with back pain get said pain through laborious work. Who works with their back instead of their brain? Why, stupid people of course! So a bunch of people with small brains but hurt backs, seriously, what kind of no-brainer (haha) is this?
  • No brain, no headache.

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