The amygdala plays a role in pain and neuroplastic symptoms

Many people believe pain is just physical- meaning it’s your body. What most people don’t understand is the role of the brain in physical pain and neuroplastic symptoms- physical symptoms that are produced by the brain not the body. In this video I review a paper from 2020 (link here) that looked at the role of the amygdala in pain physiology. Here’s a direct quote from the paper highlighting how an emotional center in the brain can play a role in chronic physical pain (neuroplastic symptoms).

“Our current overall concept of amygdala function in pain can be described as follows. In pain conditions, increased nociceptive input (and/or “stress signals” in so-called functional pain conditions without any tissue pathology) drives hyperexcitability of amygdala output neurons. One consequence of increased amygdala output is the facilitation of spinal, and perhaps peripheral, nociceptive processing.

Another effect is the deactivation of (medial) prefrontal cortical control centers, resulting in the well-documented cognitive deficits associated with pain conditions. The combination of these vicious cycles of gain and loss of function allows the persistence of pain-related neuroplasticity in the amygdala and drives pain behaviors and pain persistence.“