Chronic pain is the main cause of disability in industrialized countries, leading to significant public health expenditure in care and labor concepts. However, unresolved questions remain about the factors involved in its origin and its maintenance. Although its onset is not attributable to a single cause, there are several risk factors, including age, lifestyle (e.g., physical inactivity, stress, poor sleep, unhealthy diet) and psychosocial factors (e.g., depression, catastrophizing, anxiety, fear-avoidance of movement, maladaptive beliefs and body image). Additionally, several studies have shown that chronic pain generates functional and structural brain changes that could favor its maintenance.

The prevalence of chronic pain increases through adult life, reaching a peak around the seventh decade. Given the current aging population, the prevalence of chronic pain in older people also represents a growing public health problem. However, pain in this population is often underestimated and, consequently, undertreated. Therefore, understanding the underlying mechanisms of chronic pain from a biopsychosocial approach and changes associated with age is crucial to be able to develop assessment instruments and effective therapeutic interventions in different age groups. The management of chronic pain is currently a challenge for caregivers and researchers, where health systems could not be able to provide high-quality health care due to saturation. Thus, new strategies must be considered. The use of the so-called mobile health (mHealth) tools and wearables are presented as a cost-effective alternative to record patients’ daily activities, providing rapid feedback to users and clinicians, supporting telerehabilitation efforts and decreasing clinic visits. In this regard, some recent studies using mHealth applications showed moderate-quality evidence reducing pain and disability in chronic pain patients. However, more studies are still needed to assess the quality and cost-effectiveness of this type of self-managed therapeutic alternatives.

The aim of this Research Topic is to explore different factors influencing the development and maintenance of chronic pain across the lifespan to improve current assessment and management tools. It will address work from basic to clinical research, including multiple types of manuscripts (research papers, reviews, meta-analysis, commentaries, and methodological manuscripts) focusing on the following subtopics in chronic pain:

(1) Aging

(2) lifestyle (including physical exercise, stress reduction programs, diet therapy)

(3) psychosocial factors (including depression, catastrophizing, anxiety or fear-avoidance of movement, maladaptive beliefs and body image)

(4) neurophysiological mechanisms

(5) mHealth.

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Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

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