“This can help us better conduct clinical studies by screening out patients that respond to placebo and we can just include patients that do not respond. And we can measure the efficacy of a certain drug in a much more effective manner.”

Baliki told Pain News Network that differences in the brain could explain why some prescription drugs – such as Lyrica (pregabalin) – are effective in giving pain relief to some patients, but not for others.

“If we do the same with Lyrica, maybe we can find another area of the brain that can predict the response to that drug,” he said.

The study findings are being published in PLOS Biology.

"The new technology will allow physicians to see what part of the brain is activated during an individual's pain and choose the specific drug to target this spot," said Vania Apkarian, a professor of physiology at Feinberg and study co-author. "It also will provide more evidence-based measurements. Physicians will be able to measure how the patient's pain region is affected by the drug."

Currently, most clinical studies involving pain are conducted on healthy subjects in controlled experimental settings. Those experiments usually induce acute pain through immersion in cold water, pressure or some other type of applied pain. Baliki says there are significant differences between acute and chronic pain, and the experiments often translate poorly in clinical settings where pain is usually chronic.