Chronic pain is a major problem for society and further studies are needed to understand pain-related developments. In particular, controversy exists over the pattern of pain-related structural changes in the brain. The current morphometric study addresses inconsistencies through a large sample of chronic osteoarthritis knee pain patients and healthy volunteers scanned at a single-site, allowing to differentiate sex effects which are usually ignored. We found significantly decreased gray matter density in pain patients in several brain regions, amongst which the left planum temporale which was driven by the female subjects and has not been mentioned in relation to pain before.
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