A Pilot Study Examining Neural Response to Pain in Adolescents With and Without Chronic Pain.

Chronic pain is common in adolescence and is associated with both pain and prevalence of mental illness later in life. While previous functional neuroimaging work has informed knowledge of neural alterations associated with chronic pain, these findings have been primarily limited to adult samples, and it is unclear if similar patterns of altered brain activation are present in the developing adolescent brain. The purpose of this study was to pilot a noxious pressure task during functional neuroimaging to assess brain response to pain in adolescents with and without chronic pain.