Another paper on Adult Tethered Cord Syndrome: Yamada et al. 2004

This paper, "Symptomatic protocols for adult tethered cord syndrome", discusses symptoms unique to a diagnosis of tethered cord syndrome (TCS). For example, some positive symptoms are the inability to lie on your back for long, or how bending slightly over the sink to shave or brush your teeth causes symptoms.

Authors: Shokei Yamada1; Javed Siddiqi2; Daniel J. Won2; Daniel K. Kido3; Anthony Hadden1; John Spitalieri2; Bruce A. Everett4; Chinyere G. Obasi4; Todd M. Goldenberg4; Lynton G.F. Giles5; Shoko M. Yamada6

Source: Neurological Research, Volume 26, Number 7, October 2004 , pp. 741-744(4)

Abstract:
Diagnosis of tethered cord syndrome (TCS) is complicated because anatomical information is not adequate for this task. For example, recent studies have shown that the combination of an elongated cord and a thick filum terminale, demonstrated by MRI or at operation, is no longer an essential feature for the diagnosis of TCS. For TCS diagnosis, emphasis should rather be on its characteristic symptomatology and accentuated by postural changes, since TCS is a functional disorder of the lumbosacral spinal cord. In this report, the authors present the list of signs and symptoms pertinent to TCS in adult and late teenage patients to serve as a diagnostic means.

Here is a link to my copy of the paper: PDF.

How chronic pain harms brain function

I ran into another interesting article on chronic pain today. Some researchers at Northwestern University used functional MRI scanning to show that brains of those with chronic back pain are stuck in a sort of full-throttle mode of operation, even for simple tasks.
Here's the wire story:

By Julie Steenhuysen Tue Feb 5, 5:50 PM ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Brain scans of people in chronic pain show a state of constant activity in areas that should be at rest, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday, a finding that could help explain why pain patients have higher rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders.

They said chronic pain seems to alter the way people process information that is unrelated to pain.

"It seems that enduring pain for a long time affects brain function in response to even minimally demanding attention tasks completely unrelated to pain," the researchers wrote in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Continue reading on Yahoo News or, if you want to read the actual research paper, there is a PDF here:

Beyond Feeling: Chronic Pain Hurts the Brain, Disrupting
the Default-Mode Network Dynamics
Marwan N. Baliki,1 Paul Y. Geha,1 A. Vania Apkarian,1,2,3,4 and Dante R. Chialvo1