(KCEN) -- Doctors may soon have a new tool to diagnose and treat chronic pain.
Doctors at a woman's hospital in Boston looked for differences in brain activity between healthy adults and those with chronic back pain.
Specific brain patterns appeared to track the severity of pain while the patients moved in ways that were painful.
While more research needs to be done, it could help develop an objective scales for measuring pain in people, something that is otherwise unseen.