After only one to three days of a whiplash injury, scientists can predict which patients will develop chronic pain based on the extent of cross ‘talk’ between two regions of the brain, and the person’s anxiety level after the injury, according to a new study . The study showed the more the hippocampus — the brain’s memory center — talked to the cortex — involved in long term memory storage — the more likely the person is to develop chronic pain. In addition, the higher a person’s anxiety immediately after the car accident, the more precisely scientists could predict the chronic pain people reported one year after the accident. This is the first study to show that only a few days after a given injury, the brain can adapt in a way that imparts a risk for the development of chronic pain.
