Neuroplasticity
How Your Brain Can Heal Chronic Pain
Neuroplasticity is your brain’s natural ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. This process is how the brain learns new skills, recovers from injuries, and most importantly, reduces chronic pain.
How Neuroplasticity Works
The brain communicates with the body through a complex network of cells called neurons, which exchange important signals at specialized junctions known as synapses.
In cases of chronic pain, the brain and nervous system can become overly sensitive, a condition often referred to as "central sensitization."
This heightened sensitivity can result in the misinterpretation of pain, persisting even after the original injury has healed.
Fortunately, neuroplasticity enables the brain to develop new neural connections, which can help to significantly reduce unnecessary pain signals and promote a more balanced perception of pain.
This happens in specific areas of the brain:
Somatosensory Cortex: This part of the brain helps you feel things like touch, pressure, and pain. In chronic pain, this area of the brain can misinterpret normal sensations as painful. But through neuroplasticity, this part of the brain can learn to stop making those mistakes.
Thalamus: The thalamus acts as a relay station, sending information from your body to different parts of the brain. It plays a big role in sending pain signals. When neuroplasticity kicks in, the thalamus can change how it passes along these signals, reducing pain.
Prefrontal Cortex: This part helps with decision-making and controlling emotions. It can also influence how much pain you feel by managing how pain is processed emotionally. Neuroplasticity can strengthen this area’s ability to help calm pain responses.
How Neuroplasticity Affects the Nervous System
The nervous system includes both the brain and the peripheral nerves, which are the nerves running throughout your body that send messages to the brain. In chronic pain, these nerves can become too sensitive and send too many pain messages. Through neuroplasticity, the brain can learn to "turn down" this sensitivity, helping your nerves send fewer pain signals.
Neuroplasticity in Action
Think of learning to ride a bike. At first, you wobble and fall because your brain and muscles aren’t used to working together that way. But with practice, the brain builds new connections between the area that controls movement and your muscles, making riding a bike easier. In the same way, when you experience chronic pain, your brain has built unhelpful pain pathways. Neuroplasticity allows the brain to "unlearn" those pain pathways and form new, healthy ones.
Additionally, you can think of how learning to play a musical instrument strengthens new connections in your brain. At first, your fingers may not cooperate, but with practice, the brain builds stronger pathways between the motor cortex area of the brain (which controls movement) and the actual muscles in your hands. Over time, playing becomes automatic and easy. Calming pain is a neuroplastic skill that can also be learned.
One more real-life example of neuroplasticity is when someone relearns to move after a stroke. After parts of the brain are damaged, new connections are made, and the person can regain movement by forming new neural pathways. The same thing happens with chronic pain—your brain can "rewire" itself to reduce or stop the pain.
Chronic pain is something the brain has memorized and learned.
However, this is maladaptive learning. And it is unhelpful, because we are no longer in danger, nor is there a current acute injury.
Connective Wellness™ provides specific neuroplastic therapies to untrain chronic pain messaging in the brain and nervous system to form new, healthier signaling.
How Neuroplasticity Can Help Heal Chronic Pain
Therapies like Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), Distal Point Acupuncture, and Clinical Hypnosis work by boosting neuroplasticity. They help the brain and nervous system learn new ways to process pain.
Here’s how they work:
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) teaches your brain that the pain it’s feeling is not harmful. This helps rewire pain pathways in the brain.
Distal Point Acupuncture stimulates nerves at points away from where the pain is felt. This can help release feel-good chemicals like endorphins (the body’s natural painkillers) and serotonin (which lifts your mood), helping to rewire the brain’s pain centers.
Clinical Hypnosis works with parts of the brain like the amygdala (which handles emotions like fear) and the anterior cingulate cortex (which helps manage pain). It helps these areas reshape how they interpret and respond to pain signals, and in so doing, calm the intensity and volume of felt pain.
