Center for Pain and the Brain, c/o Brain Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA 02478, USA.
Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2011 Jun;15(3):223-9. doi: 10.1007/s11916-011-0187-1.
As with many disorders affecting the central nervous system, treatment of chronic pain is fraught with difficulties related to specific diagnosis and measures of treatment efficacy. Given the recent advances that brain-imaging techniques have contributed to our understanding of how chronic pain affects multiple aspects of brain function (including sensory, emotional, cognitive, and modulatory), opportunities to use these approaches in the clinic are clearly a focus of research laboratories around the world. The routine application of brain imaging as a clinical marker of disease state or therapeutic (drug) efficacy would significantly enhance the clinical process by providing objective measures for clinicians and patients.
与许多影响中枢神经系统的疾病一样，慢性疼痛的治疗充满了与特定诊断和治疗效果衡量相关的困难。鉴于脑成像技术的最新进展有助于我们了解慢性疼痛如何影响大脑功能的多个方面（包括感觉、情感、认知和调节），因此，在临床上使用这些方法的机会显然是世界各地研究实验室的研究重点。将脑成像作为疾病状态或治疗（药物）效果的临床标志物常规应用，将通过为临床医生和患者提供客观的衡量标准，显著增强临床进程。
