Review Article
The Alterations in the Brain Corresponding to Low Back Pain: Recent Insights and Advances
Table 2
Structural alterations of grey matters in back pain patients.
| Subjects | Assessed indices | Main findings | Reference |
| 17 patients with nonspecific LBP | Whole brain volume | Ventrolateral prefrontal cortical regions↑ | [20] | 124 CBP patients | GM cortical thickness | Left PCC and right rostral middle frontal gyrus cortical thickness ↑ | [21] | 90 CLBP patients | GM volume | Left ACC volume↑, no significant difference in cortical thickness or surface area of the ACC. | [22] | 14 CLBP patients | Whole brain volume | No significant clusters of thinning or thickening | [23] | 40 SBP patients, 28 CBP patients | GM limbic volume | NAc volume ↓ | [24] | 103 CLBP patients | GM volume | Primary somatosensory cortex volume↑ | [25] | 58 LBP patients | GM density | Dorsal paracingulate cortex density↓ | [26] | 111 CLBP patients | GM density | PFC and the anterior INS density↓ | [27] | 14 CLBP patients | Total GM volume, total, partial GM volume, GM density | Total grey matter volume ↓, grey matter density in ROI (the PFC and the thalamus) ↓ | [28] | 18 CLBP patients, 14 of them with 6 months treatment | GM cortical thickness | Left dlPFC cortical thickness before treatment ↓, left dlPFC cortical thickness after treatment ↑ | [29] |
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ACC, anterior cingulate cortex; CBP, chronic back pain; CLBP, chronic low back pain; dlPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; GM, grey matter; INS, insula; LBP, low back pain; NAc, nucleus accumbens; PCC, posterior cingulate cortex; PFC, prefrontal cortex; ROI, regions of interest; SBP, subacute back pain.
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