Pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), which teaches people to view pain signals sent to the brain as less threatening, may help treat chronic pain, according to new research.
A study published in JAMA Network Open looked at the critical link between the brain and pain in chronic pain management and found that after PRT, patients reported a reduction in back pain.
"Our research shows that discussing the effects of pain with patients and helping them understand that pain is often 'in the brain' can help reduce it," said Yoni Ashar, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Campus of Medicine. .
To investigate the effects of pain-induced effects, researchers enrolled more than 150 adults with moderate chronic back pain in a randomized trial of PRT and found that two-thirds of those treated with PRT reported being pain-free or nearly pain-free after treatment. . , compared to 20 percent of the placebo control.

"This study is very important because patients' pain ratings are often inaccurate. We found that very few people believed that their brain had anything to do with their pain. Ashar said this can be counterproductive and detrimental to recovery planning, as attributing pain leads to important treatment decisions such as surgery or psychological treatment.
Before PRT treatment, only 10 percent of PRT participants had a spiritual or brain connection, according to the researchers.
However, after PRT, this increased to 51 percent, indicating that the more participants changed to attribute their pain to mental or brain processes, the more the intensity of chronic back pain decreased.
"Our research shows that discussing the impact of pain with patients and helping them understand that pain is often 'in the brain' can help reduce it," Ashar said. - Discussions with patients often focus on the biomedical causes of pain. The role of the brain is rarely discussed. With this study, we want to provide patients with as much help as possible by exploring different regional therapies, including those that treat the brain causes of chronic pain, he added.