Widespread body pain is a common complaint of those suffering from fibromyalgia. A new study, published in the Journal of Pain, finds that people with fibromyalgia show a greater excitability in the hippocampal region of the brain.

The hippocampus is a brain structure that is sensitive to the effects of stress, and people who experience a lot of stress tend to have disrupted hippocampal function.

The study examined 16 fibromyalgia patients and found that each of them had greater than expected hippocampal response.

Fibromyalgia (sometimes also terms FMS) is a chronic pain disease where the patient experiences pain in all over his/her body. While the pain is all over, there are also certain spots on the body which are more sensitive to the slightest of pressure. The FMS disorder is an unusual condition whose causes have not been completely understood, and therefore, treatment of this disorder is not well defined. The disease impacts almost 3.7 million adult individuals in the United States.