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]

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.