This is an article written by Richmond Stace, who I met last year on the David Butler lecture on pain.
Pain is multidimensional. Pain is 100% produced by the brain in response to a perceived threat. The brain allocates a location using the cortical maps, hence why we feel pain in our backs or knees. The brain tries to make sense of the situation, scrutinising what is going on on the basis of past experience (learning) and comparing to the information being received from ALL body systems. This is the reason for the term ‘multisystem output’ as a way of describing what is happening when we are in pain.
Read more here: Pain – some things you may not have realised and check out the research articles Richmond has gathered at the bottom of the article.
Whilst we are on the topic of pain, check out our colleague Paul Argent’s thoughts following the David Butler course.
Another great blog post from Todd Hargrove:
”Put these findings all together and a simple picture merges. When the brain receives information from the body indicating that a particular form of exertion is a threat, it decides to shut the activity down. It is surprising to me that such a common sense idea takes so long to gain acceptance, and is ignored all too often.
…Threat not only causes pain, it limits performance. If you want to increase performance, work to reduce threat.
This is why the “no pain no gain” mentality of exercise is so counterproductive, and why giving the brain “good news” about the body should be a primary training strategy.”
According to a new study published in this month’s issue of the journal Cognition, expressions such as ‘on top of the world’, ‘down in the dumps’, or feeling ‘low’ are not merely metaphorical.
The research provides evidence of a causal link between motion and emotion, by showing that bodily movements influence the recollection of emotional memories, as well as the speed with which they are recalled.
Read more: Neurophilosophy
(via ScienceBlogs)