Decoding Brain Waves to Measure Chronic Pain

Brain signals can be used to detect the severity of chronic pain, potentially leading to the development of personalized therapies for individuals suffering from severe pain conditions. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, implanted electrodes in the brains of four people with chronic pain and identified biomarkers of chronic pain in the brain signal patterns, which were as unique to the individual as a fingerprint. They used machine learning to model the results of the surveys and successfully predicted how the patients would score the severity of their pain by examining their brain activity.