{"id":446,"date":"2015-11-09T23:24:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T23:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fitpt.fitbux.com\/?p=446"},"modified":"2020-06-30T19:36:39","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T19:36:39","slug":"pain-catastrophizing-and-your-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fitbux.com\/fitpt\/interviews\/pain-catastrophizing-and-your-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Pain Catastrophizing and Your Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Suffering From Pain is Optional: Pain Catastrophizing and your Brain<\/h3>\n
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This was originally posted at bodyinmind.org To see the original article please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Experts agree that the experience of pain is influenced by a large number of biological, social, and psychological factors.\u00a0 The state of our physical body, the amount and quality of support we get from our family and friends, and our beliefs about pain all work together to influence the intensity and quality of all of our sensations, including pain.\u00a0 Of all of the psychological factors that have been studied and shown to be associated with pain and its impact on our lives, the single most consistent (and to date \u2013 among the strongest) factor associated with pain is catastrophizing [1-3].<\/p>\n

Catastrophizing can be defined as extremely negative thoughts and beliefs about pain.\u00a0 They include such thoughts as \u201cIt is terrible!\u201d, \u201cIt is never going to get better\u201d, and \u201cI can\u2019t stand this pain any more\u201d.\u00a0 Researchers have not only found that these types of thoughts are consistently associated with current pain, but that when people with chronic pain think such thoughts, this is followed by increases in pain and suffering [4, 5].\u00a0 Thus, while catastrophizing thoughts have not yet been proven to always lead to more pain and suffering, all of the evidence we have so far is consistent with the theories that argue that catastrophizing about pain makes things worse.<\/p>\n

Because of the role that catastrophizing is thought to play in pain and pain-related suffering, we are very interested in understanding what can lead to more (or less) catastrophizing.\u00a0 We recently published a study that was designed to examine one factor that might underlie the development and maintenance of catastrophizing: the relative activity level of two specific areas of the brain [6].<\/p>\n

Our reasons for looking at brain activity as a predictor of catastrophizing were as follows.\u00a0 First, we know that there is a tendency for activity in the front right part of the brain (so-called \u201cright anterior\u201d area) to be involved in some \u201cnegative\u201d feelings (like sadness and anxiety) and a tendency to slow down or withdraw, and activity in the front left part of the brain (actual brain region) to be involved in more \u201cpositive\u201d feelings (like optimism, joy, and hope) and a tendency to engage in approach behaviors [7].\u00a0 Second, we know that catastrophizing thoughts are associated \u2013 sometimes very strongly \u2013 with negative feelings and withdrawal.\u00a0 Finally, the amount of a certain type of brain wave (so-called \u201calpha\u201d waves on electroencephalogram or EEG) in an area of the brain is associated with less activity in that brain area, because the presence of this activity is associated with the release of chemicals in the brain that inhibit activity.<\/p>\n

Based on all of these ideas, we hypothesized that if we measured (1) brain waves (using EEG) just over the right and left front areas of the brain at one point in time and then (2) catastrophizing thoughts two year later<\/em> in a group of individuals with chronic pain, we would see more alpha (i.e., more suppression of activity) in the left front areas of the brain, relative to the right, among those with more catastrophizing.\u00a0 Measuring brain waves is tricky, because so many things (including what you are feeling at the time of assessment, whether and how much coffee you have drunk, how much sleep you had) impact upon EEG.\u00a0 So, in order to help ensure that we had a good and stable measure of brain activity, we performed five EEG assessments, with each one more than a week apart, and then averaged the amount of \u201calpha asymmetry\u201d (that is, a ratio of left to right frontal alpha activity) across the assessments.\u00a0 We then correlated this alpha asymmetry score with the measure of catastrophizing that we assessed two years later.<\/p>\n

Our study hypothesis was supported.\u00a0 Individuals with more alpha asymmetry (reflecting greater left than right sided frontal alpha; that is, a relative suppression of left frontal activity) reported more subsequent catastrophizing.\u00a0 The findings are consistent with a model hypothesizing that brain activity in the front of the brain might make people with chronic pain more vulnerable to the development of catastrophizing thoughts, and therefore how much they might suffer from pain. We think that this finding is interesting in and of itself, because it helps us to understand how activity in the brain might (potentially) influence our response to chronic pain.\u00a0 One of the strengths of this study is that the measure of brain activity was assessed before (well<\/em> before, two years) the measure of catastrophizing, making it difficult to argue that catastrophizing assessed two years later \u201ccaused\u201d the brain activity two years previously.\u00a0 Still, it is important to acknowledge that the alpha asymmetry which was found to predict might or might not directly influence the development of catastrophizing; it remains possible that it merely reflected a process that is related to catastrophizing.\u00a0 Research is needed to examine the effects of procedures that influence EEG activity on catastrophizing to determine the role that alpha asymmetry might play in this process.<\/p>\n

More importantly, if this finding turns out to be reliable (that is, if other researchers using similar strategies get the same or similar results), it suggests some potentially interesting and innovative ways to treat pain. For example, it may be possible to \u201cactivate\u201d the left frontal areas of our brain or \u201cinhibit\u201d the right frontal areas of our brain in order to catastrophize less \u2013 or to think more positively about pain. This could be accomplished by changing what we do (active exercise as an \u201capproach\u201d behavior that could activate left frontal areas), what we think (envisioning a positive future), or even how we feel (engaging in activities that bring us pleasure or that are meaningful to us).\u00a0 There are even more direct ways that are being developed to activate or inhibit brain activity via low voltage electric or magnetic stimulation.\u00a0 These \u201ctreatments\u201d, perhaps even in combination with changes in behavior, thoughts, or feelings, could potentially influence catastrophizing.<\/p>\n

As alluded to previously, because this was a correlational study, the results do not prove that the amount of left versus right frontal activity causes catastrophizing. \u00a0However, the findings are consistent with the alpha asymmetry hypothesis, and indicate that more research to explore and test this hypothesis further is warranted.\u00a0 Ideally, research in this area will help us better understand how catastrophizing is maintained, and help us identify ways to decrease catastrophizing responses when they are posing problems for people with pain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suffering From Pain is Optional: Pain Catastrophizing and your Brain This was originally posted at bodyinmind.org To see the original article please click here. Experts agree that the experience of pain is influenced by a large number of biological, social, and psychological factors.\u00a0 The state of our physical body, the amount and quality of support […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nPain Catastrophizing and Your Brain - FitPT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Experts agree that the experience of pain is influenced by a large number of biological, social, and psychological factors.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fitbux.com\/fitpt\/interviews\/pain-catastrophizing-and-your-brain\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pain Catastrophizing and Your Brain - 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