Is my pain neuroplastic?

What does this screener actually measure?

It measures two independent things that get conflated constantly in chronic pain care: the mechanism producing the pain, and the beliefs shaping what you do about it.

Part 1: six feature domains

Twelve questions, each belonging to one of six domains: duration and spread, what tests have explained, sensitivity, variability, sleep, energy and focus, and how it started. Each domain is reported on its own as low, some, or marked. They are deliberately not added into one number, because a single score would imply a single cause, and most pain has more than one thing going on.

Part 2: fear-avoidance, confidence and readiness

Four statements adapted from the FABQ physical-activity subscale, plus four on confidence and readiness. Fear-avoidance predicts disability better than pain intensity does. Readiness decides what to do about it: the same elevated fear score leads to graded exposure for someone who feels safe increasing activity, and to rebuilding that sense of safety first for someone who does not.

How is it scored?

Each of the twelve feature questions scores 2 for yes, 1 for somewhat and 0 for no, and those points stay inside their own domain rather than being pooled. A domain is reported as marked when two thirds or more of its points are present, some between a third and two thirds, and low below that.

The fear-avoidance statements score 0–6 each for a total of 0–24, on the same range as the FABQ physical-activity subscale, so 15 or above carries its conventional reading as elevated. Confidence and readiness score 0–12 each, where higher is better.

How is the fear-avoidance score calculated?

The four fear-avoidance questions above are scored the way the Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ) scores its physical-activity subscale, so your number is interpretable against the published thresholds. Each item is rated 0 (completely disagree) to 6 (completely agree). For what fear-avoidance actually is, the model behind it and the evidence, see kinesiophobia.

• FABQ-PA (physical activity): items 2, 3, 4 and 5, scored 0–24. A score of 15 or above is generally treated as elevated.
• FABQ-W (work): items 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 15, scored 0–42. Scores above about 34 are associated with poor return-to-work outcomes.
• The remaining items (1, 8, 13, 14 and 16) are administered but are not scored.

The full FABQ, including the work subscale and its exact item wording, should be administered and interpreted by a clinician. The four questions in the screener above are adapted from the physical-activity subscale. They are reworded to cover pain anywhere in the body rather than the back specifically, and scored on the same 0–24 range so the result is interpretable against the familiar threshold.

A score is only a starting point. What changes it is graded exposure. Kinesiophobia covers how that works, alongside pain reprocessing therapy.

Is there an official neuroplastic pain questionnaire?

Not a single agreed one, which is worth knowing before you go looking for a definitive test. What exists instead is a set of clinical criteria plus several validated questionnaires that measure adjacent constructs.

• The IASP clinical criteria for nociplastic pain (Kosek et al.) cover pain of at least three months, a regional rather than discrete distribution, pain not entirely explained by nociceptive or neuropathic mechanisms, and evidence of pain hypersensitivity. With a history of regional hypersensitivity plus comorbidities such as sleep disturbance, fatigue, cognitive problems, or sensitivity to light, sound or smell, the classification becomes probable nociplastic pain.
• The Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI), a validated 25-item measure of central-sensitivity symptoms, widely used in research and clinics.
• Positive clinical features used by clinicians who diagnose neuroplastic pain: onset in a stressful period, symptoms that move or vary with context, triggering by anticipation, and pain-free windows.

The screener on this page draws on all three, which is why it produces a likelihood band rather than a label. A clinician confirming the diagnosis is still the necessary step.

What should you do with your result?

Take it to a clinician. The most useful thing a screener like this does is change the question you walk in with, from *'why can't anyone find what's wrong?'* to *'could this be nociplastic pain, and if so what treats it?'*

1. Deal with anything flagged in the safety check first. Those need assessment, not retraining.
2. Print or save your result and bring the two scores to your next appointment.
3. Ask directly whether a nociplastic or neuroplastic mechanism explains your pain, and what would confirm or rule it out.
4. If fear-avoidance came back elevated, ask specifically about graded exposure rather than rest.
5. Learn the mechanism: understanding how pain is produced has itself been shown to reduce it.

If the picture fits, the treatments worth asking about are the ones aimed at the pain system rather than the tissue: pain reprocessing therapy, emotional awareness and expression therapy, pain neuroscience education, graded exposure, and VR embodiment training. Chronic pain treatment options covers how these compare with the tissue-directed approaches.

What can this screener not tell you?

It cannot diagnose. It cannot detect a fracture, an infection, an inflammatory disease, a tumour, or nerve compression, all of which can produce long-standing pain and all of which need medical assessment. Nor can it tell you what proportion of your pain is structural. A low score does not mean your pain is untreatable, any more than a high score means it is imagined.

Used properly, this is a structured way to notice a pattern you may have been living inside for years without a name for it, and then to go and get it checked.