Chronic Pain

Pain can be elusive and difficult to treat. This is because the nervous system that generates pain is made up of both peripheral and central components. The periphery (outside the brain) is what most people commonly associate with pain. If you hurt a particular body part, you tend to focus on that location. The problem is that this region is either sending pain signals to the brain (the central component) and/or the brain could be causing you to feel pain by spontaneously generating pain signals. Most often, in the case of chronic pain, it is a combination of central and peripheral components. It can be difficult to determine how much of what is going on in the brain versus the periphery is responsible for the pain.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to: