Patent ID: 8755862

Claim:
An apparatus for detecting whether a subject is experiencing any of three individual pain components of nociceptive pain, neuropathic pain, or psychological pain, comprising: a magnetic resonance spectrometer configured for obtaining spectroscopic data of the brain of a subject experiencing pain; a memory device configured for storing reference spectroscopic data having characteristic values which correlate with and identify the three different pain components; and a comparator configured to compare the spectroscopic data obtained with the reference spectroscopic data to detect whether the subject is experiencing any of the three individual pain components (1) wherein an increase of glucose and GABA in the frontal cortex, or a decrease in N-acetylaspartate (NAA), or an increase in choline, indicates nociceptive pain, (2) wherein a decrease of glucose and GABA in the frontal cortex indicate neuropathic pain, and (3) a small variation of glucose or GABA in the frontal cortex indicates psychological pain.