Chronic Pain Reset: Unmasking the Brain's Role in Processing Pain with Dr. Afton L. Hassett

Nociception is kind of the root of the word for nociception, for pain perception. And plastic just refers to the brain's plasticity to rewire and reform. And we do think that most chronic pain really is due to just changes in the networks, in the structure and function of these networks in the brain, and that they are malleable. We can see them become worse and more interconnected, or we can see changes. And often we'll see in an intervention study when we do neuroimaging before the study and then after it, we'll actually see different areas of the brain functioning differently. There'll be different connectivity. There may be different areas that are speaking to each other. There may be areas that are less lit up, that there's less activity in them after the intervention. So we do see this kind of this— these these changes in responses to therapy and how the brain networks work. And that's why we're pretty sure that's how it works.