Pain in Your Body and Pain in the Brain’s Virtual Body
As I have written about in previous articles, pain is a bit of a mysterious phenomenon. While most people would assume that pain means that there is damage to a body part, the brain does not evaluate situations in that manner. The brain only sends a pain message when it senses that part of the body is in danger and protective actions need to be taken. But this does not mean that the tissues themselves are damaged in any way, only that the brain has determined that some danger is present and it would be a good idea to move away from the source of it.
Thus, the brain sends a pain message to the part of the body where it has determined danger to exist. This may or may not have any correspondence with the reality of the situation. When damage actually happens to a tissue, such as a pulled muscle or tendon, the body repairs the damage in a set amount of time. Skin is repaired, the tendon swells up and then inflammation reduces, range of motion is regained in a previously injured joint, and so on. Pain is the brain’s way of telling us to keep a part of us out of danger.
But what about when an injury heals and pain lasts long after the injury and healing process have ended? These feelings of discomfort can become chronic. Are the tissues still damaged? Probably not, unless something went wrong in the healing process. So it must be the brain that is continuing to send the pain message long after an injury has healed.
And what about phantom limbs and phantom limb pain? People who have had a leg amputated can often feel the limb even though it has been missing for yours. Even children who are born without an arm or leg can feel the missing limb — even though it never existed in reality at all. And these missing limbs can often feel painful and uncomfortable. So how is the brain still sending a pain message to a limb that does not exist?
[Back pain doctor in Milwaukee]
Phantom limb pain indicates that the brain keeps its own separate but connected map of the body, and can send pain messages even in the absence of the limb it has determined is in danger. Talk about overly sensitized nerves! But this also shows that the brain constructs the pain experience and then projects it onto its map of the body, also referred to as the virtual body. But the feelings that we can have based on the brain’s messages to the virtual body may have little or nothing to do with what is actually going on in the tissues themselves.
This can be both a frightening and positive discovery for people suffering from chronic pain syndromes. All of the massage, acupuncture, and supplements in the world may have little benefit for chronic pain, as the tissues may no longer be damaged, but the painful feelings are still projected onto the brain’s map of the body by the pain centers in the brain itself. While this does not mean that all chronic pain is “all in your head,” it does give people more control over the treatment of their conditions, as future articles will discuss.
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